Frida Siekkinen
Associate Senior Lecturer
Unit for General Didactics and Pedagogic WorkAbout Frida Siekkinen
I have a PhD in Child and Youth Studies at the Department of Education, Communication and Learning and now work as a senior lecturer in pedagogical work at the Department of Pedagogical, Curricular and Professional Studies. I also have a part-time position as a postdoc funded by The Swedish Research Council for Sport Science.
Previously, I worked as a university lecturer at the Department of Swedish, Multilingualism, Language Technology, GU, and at the University of Borås within, among other things, the teacher training programme and other courses related to teaching and education. Before that I worked as a teacher in adult education. I have a high school teacher's degree and a master's degree in Swedish as a second language.
Ongoing postdoc research project
Hit like a girl? Girls and young women in mixed martial arts. - Postdoc project funded by The Swedish Research Council for Sport Science, 2024-2025. (D2024-0032)
In a relatively short time, martial arts in general and MMA in particular have been transformed from being understood as a male-dominated and masculine activity, to a form of training for both men and women, children and adults. Despite this, knowledge about women's and young people's practice of MMA is extremely limited. This project aims to address this knowledge gap. The project is based on an ethnographic approach where participants are interviewed and observed. The purpose of the project is to investigate how girls and young women (15-25 years) negotiate and present gender, and more specifically femininity, in and through MMA. I am interested in the participants' sense-making, body understanding and how different gender norms in sport are understood and possibly challenged. I am also interested in the conditions for participation and how same-sex training is experienced.
Ongoing research projects (2024-2028)
Possibilities and conditions of multilingual student teachers in teacher education
Research
My research interests concern questions about the living conditions of people, especially children and young people, in today's society and in different contexts, for example in education and in leisure time. My research is based on critical perspectives on societal power asymmetries such as ethnicity, language, gender and class.
Doctoral thesis
My doctoral dissertation "To be and not to be - Student position(s) in the field of tension between Swedish and Swedish as a second language" is about categorizations that arise as a result of the division between the two Swedish subjects in primary school. The thesis focuses in particular on how the category "Swedish as a second language student" is made and how students and school staff negotiate and relate to its meaning and content in everyday school life.