Linn Alenius Wallin

Teaching

In the autumn of 2025, I teach in the School of Social Work’s courses Sopa14, Sopa45, Sopb63 and SopM21, as well as in the Psychology Programme course PSPB15, The Human Being in Social and Cultural Perspective, and Ethics in SIMM55.

I have also previously taught in sociology, social work, gender studies, behavioural science, philosophy of science, feminist perspectives on sociology, intersectionality, personal life theory, qualitative methods, and ethics.

Research

I am currently a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Social Work, working with my project Children’s Friendships with Adults: A Participatory Research Study with Children as Co-Researchers. The project has three overarching aims: (1) to empirically investigate children’s friendships with adults from the perspective of children themselves; (2) to further develop the method of collective memory-work for children’s active participation in research; and (3) to contribute to theoretical development concerning children’s recognition and epistemic injustice. The project is funded by Forte.

In parallel, I also work as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Southern Denmark in the project The Danish Family Revolution: Experiences and Institutions.

I earned my PhD in Sociology in the autumn of 2024 with the dissertation Bonus Grandchildren and Bonus Grandparents: Caring Relations Across Generations in Reconstituted and Chosen Families. The dissertation examines bonus relationships between bonus grandchildren and bonus grandparents. As people of all ages form new partnerships, complex family relations emerge across generations. I conducted interviews with children (ages 5–19) and older adults (ages 65–75) who had bonus grandchildren or bonus grandparents as a result of reconstituted relationships or because they had actively chosen such a relationship.

My research interests concern personal relationships from a personal life perspective. This means that I focus particularly on the intimate and significant relationships people identify as important in their lives, such as friendship, family, and family-like relations.

I am also deeply interested in how research and research processes can be opened up and made more accessible. I work with this both in my own project, in which children act as co-analysts, and in the Danish project, where the empirical material consists of approximately 1,000 interviews with older Danes conducted by 4,000 upper-secondary school students.

Previously I participate in the research projects Home Care, Welfare, and Everyday Life, which examines older people’s perspectives and experiences of home care and paratransit services, and  "Intergenerational care in Sweden. A study of relationsips, commitments, and practices of care in everyday family life" , which analyses narratives of care in Sweden among grandparents, their adult children, and their grandchildren through interviews with these three generations.

Research Environment

FAMIW - Family, Migration and Welfare 

Äldre och åldrande

Barns röst, rättigheter och utveckling: Morgondagens praktiker för en resilient barndom