Our doctoral students and their dissertation projects
Meet our students! Here you can read more about the dissertation projects that are currently in progress and find out what research questions our doctoral students are engaged in.
Children's experiences of meeting professionals in the social services' child care investigations
The aim of the project is to examine how children experience meeting professionals in the social services when they are involved in a child investigation. There seems to be a gap in the knowledge base regarding children’s experiences in the present regardless if the investigation leads to obtaining a service or not.
Sustainable development of Rwandan family: Learning from Indigenous practices of gender equality and contemporary gender equality trends
The motivation of this research project is to analyze how changes brought by gender equality, gender policies and laws are affecting families in the African Great lakes Region in general, especially in Rwanda.
Disabled people and neurological disease
The purpose of the dissertation is to study how people with neurological disease are affected by disability. The focus of the study is on disability, which are the obstacles that a person with an impairment encounters in relation to society.
The ineffable suffering – a qualitative study about trying to explain, being understood and being medicalised in experiences of depression that cannot be articulated
The aim is for this knowledge to contribute to an increased understanding of experiences of depression among professionals, and for this to lead to improved patient/client meetings. It is also central to make the knowledge relevant for practical social work.
School background and psychosocial functioning of individuals in investigative forensic psychiatry
The thesis is a collaboration between the University of Gothenburg and the National Board of Forensic Medicine. The research project investigates how school background affects the psychosocial functioning of people undergoing forensic psychiatric examination.
Policy Translation in National Homeless Policy – A Swedish case study
After more than a decade of missing a national homeless policy in Sweden, the government released a national homeless strategy 2022 - 2026 in July 2022. The aim of the doctoral project is to contribute to the knowledge on how key actors and social workers on different levels translate and negotiate the national strategy into local practice and policies.
Professional Emotions and Emotion Management in the Swedish Social Services
The purpose of the PhD project is to contribute to an understanding of social workers’ emotions and emotion management in relation to the situation in the Swedish social services. The thesis is based on a combination of ethnographic methods: interviews, observations and shadowing, combined with text analysis of central documents such as legislation, regulatory documents and ethical guidelines.
(Un) equal social child care? A mix-method study of the importance of ethnicity during the social services' investigations of children's story of physical violence from a parent
This dissertation project aims to investigate ethnic disparities in access to social service interventions to children in cases where the child has self-reported parents' physical abuse. The main focus of this dissertation is ethnicity, but with an openness to measurement of other interacting variables, e.g. socio-economic background, gender and age.
Sexual consent– interpretations, perceptions and communication among young adults in Sweden
The aim of this dissertation is to explore different angles of sexual consent, from the perspective of young adults, focusing on their narratives of sexual consent (or non-consent). How young adults interpret, comprehend and communicate sexual consent is of interest.
A study of front-line practice in social child and youth care
The dissertation concerns front-line practice in social child and youth care, where reports of concern for children and young people are received and handled.
Civil society work on support in contacts with authorities - legal mobilization for people in marginalized life situations
The study is a dissertation project that examines how civil society supports people who have been denied support from various authorities in their interactions with these agencies. It aims to provide an understanding of how their negotiations and legal support in individual cases interact with the changes occurring in the role distribution between the public sector and civil societies in the welfare system in Sweden.
Emotions in the social services context: emotional management in case handling of abused women
This project aims to explore the emotion work carried out by the frontline social worker, focusing on the process of case handling of abused women. To thereby problematize how emotions might impact on the professionality of the individual social worker and their decision-making processes and how this can be understood through an intersectional perspective.
A qualitative study about the professional agency
industry for social workers in a Swedish context
The dissertation argues that the industry should be understood as a development driven by social workers – and made possible by the fact that social workers leave their employment within the social services for the agency industry. The project explores how social workers who work as agency workers, along with other representatives for the private agency industry, justify the existence of the industry and the presence of agency workers within the social services.
Experiences of ethnic discrimination in contact with the social services
The overall purpose of this dissertation project is to identify how ethnic discrimination in contact with the social service is experienced, understood, managed and prevented. With the help of intersectional perspectives, a part of the aim of my research project is to identify and analyse the ways in which ethnic discrimination and other grounds of discrimination overlap.
Support for youth leaving societal care
This thesis project aims to examine development, implementation and delivery of supporting services for youth transitioning from societal care to independent lives across different societal sectors.
Parents across borders
The focus of this dissertation project is unaccompanied children and their transnational relationship with their parents. The aim of the thesis is to illustrate the relationship between unaccompanied children and their parents, how the parents practice their parenting and how the Swedish social services consider the specific circumstances of these families in their work.
What is successful integration– Refugee Women's own experiences of integration and releasement process
45% of refugees in Europe are women. Research concerning migration and integration has not excluded women but is largely based on the perspectives of men. There is a need for increased knowledge about the integration of refugee women. The aim is to explore the refugee women's own experiences and “voices” of the integration process in Sweden.
Paid informal care within municipal eldercare
This dissertation concerns paid informal care within Swedish eldercare. Here, paid informal care refers to instances when informal caregivers, directly or indirectly, receives financial compensation from delivering publicly funded homecare services to an older adult.
LGBTQ+ identity development in an online setting and effects of gatekeeping phenomenon
This project wants to explore the strengths and protective factors online interactions and community have for LGBTQ+ youth as well as the risks associated with sexual identity seeking online where research shows that the LGBTQ+ population is especially vulnerable.
Disclosure of domestic violence and child abuse - talking to children and adolescents about their experiences of violence
The aim of this dissertation is to explore how children and adolescents experience conversations with professionals about violence in the family. The aim is also to explore how professionals at Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Clinics are managing disclosure of violence in the family when they meet children, adolescents and their parents or other caregivers.
Universal design, diversity and co-creation
The aim of the study is to shed light on the potential of co-creation in universal design, in the context of urban development. The purpose is to contribute to the understanding of how both social and built environment is shaped by conceptual prejudice. The universal design approach to diversity will be in focus.
Dissertation topic: Young people with intellectual disability: self-presentations online/offline and internet-related support
The aim of this PhD-project is to investigate young people with intellectual disability and their activities online, but also what happens in the intersection between online and offline. Further, the aim is to study what meaning, function and consequence social media have in their identity formation.
Meet doctoral student Ida!
What is it like to study at the doctoral level? Meet Ida, a student in the Phd program, who shares her research career journey!
