I hold a Phd in Social Work, and my practical experience of social work comes from working with different kinds of disabilities in residential care homes and in other branches of health care. In my current work as a teacher and researcher at the School of Social Work, I strive to combine knowledge from practice and research.
Research
In January 2020 I defended my thesis "Measurement and resistance- governing social workers by numbers" at the School of Social Work, Lund university. During 2023 and 2024 I will work in three research projects - one about decision making regarding children and foster- or institutional care (in collaboration with FoU Sjuhärad/HiB), and two on professional strategies and digitalization in social services (financed by Forte and Helsingborg municipality). From 2021 through 2023 I a have been coordinating the Faculty of Social Science's initiative to encourage research on social resilience. In 2023, 2024 and 2025 I will collaborate with universities in Spain, Italy and Sweden in the EU-funded Marie Curie- project Global Answer to identify good practices of receiving refugees within the European Union. Together with Professor Mimi Abramovitz at the Silberman School of Social Work in New York I run a smaller project in social workers' resistance strategies in relation to managerialism in Human Service Organisations.
Areas of interest for my research concern professional autonomy and the role of documentation, statistics and administrative logics in social work. My doctoral thesis was based on material gathered during the research project "Forms and paper work - expanding record-keeping practices in social services and health care." The project was led by KatarinaJacobsson and Elizabeth Martinell Barfoed. While conducting ethnographic fieldwork connected to a management team in the social services, reflections arouse around the merits and limitations of measuring and documentationactivities when it comes to a field such as social work.
Previously I have been engaged in the research project "Welfare Services and increased freedom of choice - the example of secondary school" led by TorbjörnHjort and Alexandru Panican. School principals and counselors were interviewedabout their views on and their own role in the changing upper secondary schoolsystem. Publications from the project are listed below.
Teaching and Internationalization
My teaching engagements at the moment concern course responsibility and supervision for the bachelor thesis in social work (SOPB-63), and seminars on the professional role in health care working with users of sign language together with social workers from Region Skånes' unit for sign language users (SOPM61), and social work in an international perspective together with Rita Sanchez from Silberman School of Social Work in New York (SOPA11). I have previous and extensive experience of supervising social work students in practical placement in their efforts to combine theory and practice.
I find it rewarding to make contacts and collaborate with social workers and scholars at social work programs around the world, through various exchanges and research trips. I have ongoing collaborations with teachers and researchers from la Universidad Nacional de Lanús in Buenos Aires, the Silberman School of Social Work in New York and la Universidad de Granada in Spain. Among other things, every semester I give zoom-lectures to master students in Lanús on critical perspectives on planning and auditing social work in Sweden. I also invite social workers and teachers from Buenos Aires and New York, to lecture for the first semester students at the social work bachelor in Lund.
Collaboration and societal engagements
Several of my research projects are carried out in collaboration with municipalities I Sweden. Based on my thesis, I give lectures and workshops on what kind of knowledge is given space in today's organizational contexts. Within the framework of the research project Considering foster care placement of children and adolescents, I collaborate with 7 municipalities and R&D- Sjuhärad at Högskolan i Borås. This research project has been requested by the municipalities' operational managers and their employees are involved in data collection, workshops, and dissemination of results. The city of Helsingborg has financed another practice-near project that deals with digitization within the social services'.
Since 2022, I am a member of the Faculty of Social Science’s and Lund municipality's research and development forum for Social Sustainability. In this forum, researchers act as companions and critical friends, following and developing Lund municipality's program for social sustainability.