Research projects at the Centre

This PhD-project explores the experiences of transnational commercial surrogacy in the context of Thailand. The aim of this project is to gain increased knowledge and understanding of what acting as a surrogate mother means and how it affects the life situation of the woman. How did the surrogacy experience affect them financially, emotionally, socially? Do they have contact with the child and the clients? And how do they remember, understand and reflect upon the surrogacy experience?

Researcher: Elina Nilsson. 

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The project explores how the concept “lone parent” gains meaning in Sweden in the twenty-first century. With mediated representations of lone parents (parenthood, parenting) in news media, life writing, film, and television as its empirical basis, the project investigates and theorizes contemporary understandings of this familial phenomenon.

Researchers: Helena Wahlström Henriksson (projekt leader), Disa Bergnehr

The project is funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond 2020-2022.

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Projektet undersöker hur personer med psykisk ohälsa åminns i samband med stadsutveckling och hur psykiatriska sjukhusens kulturarv formas och omformas efter deinstitutionaliseringsprocessen. Utifrån offentlig konst och kreativ verksamhet, begravningsplatser, och kvarters- och gatunamn undersöker projektet vad som ihågkomms och vad som glöms bort. På så sätt vill projektet undersöka den roll som mentalism – diskriminering och andrafiering av personer med psykisk ohälsa – spelar i görandet av de psykiatriska sjukhusens kulturarv.

Forskare: Cecilia Rodéhn (projektledare) och Hedvig Mårdh.

Projektet finansieras av Formas 2020-2022.

Moving beyond the binary approach to gendered human-animal relations, this project engages the Multispeceis Triad of human-horse-cattle relations as they interact in cattle ranching as well as Western style equestrian sports and tourism centering the cattle in both Sweden and Colorado.

Researcher: Andrea Petitt

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The project is funded by the Swedish Research Council and  Vetenskapsrådet and The Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography (SSAG) 2019-2022.

Hur kan elever/studenter, lärare och deras interaktioner med varandra och materiell utrustning förstås i relation till genus? På vilka sätt uttrycks och påverkar känslor handhavandet under experimentella aktiviteter? Förekommer könsstereotypa föreställningar om praktisk skicklighet/förmåga? I så fall, hur uttrycks de och vilka konsekvenser får det för vem som lär sig vad?

Forskare: Anita Hussénius (projektledare), Kristina Andersson, Annica Gullberg, Jenny Ivarsson, Kathryn Scantlebury och Henni Söderberg

The aim of this PhD project is to study which identity positions are possible for children to take in preschool documentation practices, with a particular focus on gender, class and functionality. The intersectional perspective of this study sheds new light on pedagogical documentation and its links to the Swedish preschool curriculum.

Researcher: Catarina Wahlgren.

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The topic of intimate partner violence (IPV) in lesbian and queer relationships continues to be under-researched in Sweden. This lack of knowledge and recognition can have severe consequences for the help-seeking of those who are not recognized as victims of IPV. This PhD project aims to fill this knowledge gap by examining the help-seeking processes of lesbian and queer victim-survivors of IPV in Sweden. By drawing on qualitative interviews with 25 people who have experienced violence in intimate lesbian and/or queer relationships, the thesis examines how the interviewees made sense of the experiences of IPV, where they sought help and how they perceived the support they received.

Researcher: Nicole Ovesen.

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The aim of this project is to explore what it means that a significant number of mothers leave their families in twenty-first-century Swedish literature. Literary representations of maternal abandonment are examined in relation to discourses on motherhood, family, and gender equality in contemporary Sweden.

Why do the mothers leave, and how are they portrayed? How do Swedish cultural and sociopolitical discourses on motherhood, family, and gender equality figure in the novels, and how do the novels relate and respond to them? How can we understand this literary trend, situated in a country which is usually seen as one of the best countries in the world to raise a family, especially for mothers?

Researcher: Jenny Björklund.

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This PhD project has two objectives: examining queer orientations in previous scholarly literature on video games, and working out a theoretical framework and a methodology for reading games by trying out different strategies on Dark Souls (2011) and Bloodborne (2015).

Researcher: Marie Dalby

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This PhD project is about psychological support for women who provide care for their older parents and suffer from symptoms of depression. More specifically, this project aims to:

1. identify the effectiveness of psychological support interventions in relieving symptoms of depression among informal caregivers of older adults in general and caregiving daughters specifically; 
2. explore caregiving daughters’ difficulties, needs and preferences for support, as well as what positive aspects of caregiving they experience; and
3. develop a new psychological support intervention for depression tailored for caregiving daughters.

This project is a collaboration between the Centre for Gender Research and the Department of Women’s and Children’s Health.

Researcher: Erika Mårtensson. 

Scandinavian Border Crossings: Race and Nation in Queer Assisted Reproduction is a collaborative and multi-sited ethnographic project that studies on how online media is intertwined in people’s lives, and in particular in reproduction and kinship. Not only can gametes and treatments be found and purchased online, social and other online media are now central to kinning; people search for and locate "donor siblings", and thus create new forms of kinship across Scandinavia.

Funded by Forte 2021-2023.

Researchers: Ulrika Dahl (project leader) och Rikke Andreassen

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Projektet syftar till att ur ett genus- och intersektionellt perspektiv undersöka deltagande i extrema motionslopp som kulturellt fenomen i Sverige, liksom de villkor som omgärdar detta deltagande – både för de enskilda kvinnor och män som genomför loppen och för samhället i stort.

Projektet är finansierat av Vetenskapsrådet och Centrum för idrottsforskning 2019-2022.

Forskare: Karin S. Lindelöf (projektledare) och Annie Woube.

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This PhD-project explores Higher Education Biology and which norms and values, hegemonic and alternative ways of being and ways of knowing are (re)produced within students’ and teachers’ Figured Worlds of Higher Education Biology. What kinds of people are in/excluded from becoming central participants in Higher Education Biology and Science practices? Who becomes and has become a biologist? Who is a biologist? In order to answer these questions, I use an eclectic theoretical approach including cultural, social constructivist, as well as feminist critique of science perspectives.

Researcher: Katerina Günter.

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The overall objective of this PhD-project is to explore the reported experiences of women in academic research careers in biological sciences in Mozambican academia. The investigation focuses on the entanglement between wider society and institutional factors in shaping women’s situation in this context. 

The project is funded by the Swedish International Development Agency (SIDA).

Researcher: Juvêncio Manuel Nota

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