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Lena Sawyer

Universitetslektor

Institutionen för socialt arbete
Telefon
031-786 65 80
0766-18 65 80
E-post
lena.sawyer@socwork.gu.se
Besöksadress
Sprängkullsgatan 23
41123 Göteborg
Rumsnummer
D357
Postadress
Box 720
40530 Göteborg

Om Lena Sawyer

Hello and welcome to my page. I am an associate professor of social work and received my Ph.D in cultural anthropology (2000) from University of California Santa Cruz in 2000 and since then I have lived and worked in Sweden where I have worked as a teacher and researcher in social work educational programs. My work is interdisciplinary and often collaborative and has focused primarily on understanding (and challenging) the reproduction of inequality through engaging Black feminist, critical race and post-and decolonial perspectives and methodologies. I am interested in the politics of knowledge production and in particular my work has been interested in understanding social work institutions (such as education and pedagogy) from these perspectives.

Current research projects:

Together with Nana-Osei Kofi (Women's Studies Oregon State Univ) I have collaborated in the project “Listening”: Engaging the imperial archive through Black feminist methodologies and arts-based research. In this project we have studied public space in relation to coloniality. We have approached current debates and ongoing collective memory work around public space, memory and representation as a form of fugitive social care. For example, we have explored the statue The Iron Well, as well as other places/monuments in the city of Gothenburg as fragments of coloniality, which through approaches such as ours, are collected and re-woven together to offer a reinvisioned purpose and public. We are inspired by critical archiving approaches and methodologies, for example Sadiya Harman's "critical fabulation" and Tina Campt's methodology of "listening," "refusal" and "fugitivity."

An overlapping project is together with Kris Clarke (Institution for social work, Helsinki Univ) where we are exploring walking methodologies, such as city walking, and are interested in understanding them as social work pedagogies with decolonial potential.

Another (also overlapping project) is exploring creative pedagogies, methodologies, and collaborative knowledge-making practices working together with the Afro/BlackNordic feminist collective named Kollektiv Omsorg. We are collaborating on various exploratory writing and performance projects which address the topics of Afro/Black Nordic feminisms and counter archiving as practices of care.

Since 2023 - 26 I am a part of The Colombia University Center for the Study of Social Difference Working Group on Afro-Nordic Feminisms led by Monica Miller och Nana Osei-Kofi:

https://www.socialdifference.columbia.edu/projects-/2022/4/26/afro-nordic-feminisms

Areas of competence: Critical archive studies, Art-based Methods, Black radical imagination, Black feminisms, Education and institutional discrimination, Anti-racist pedagogies, Normativity and child protection.

Avslutna forskningsprojekt Mellan 2006-2011 deltog jag i ett tvärvetenskapligt forsknings projekt, Challenging Gender, (Umeå Universitetet och Mittuniversitetet). Där medverkade jag i projektet Challenging Normalisation processes in Welfare Institutions. Projektet var finansierat av Vetenskapsrådet.

Inom ramen för CG projektet genomförde jag två studier. Den ena handlade om en kvalitativ studie av normaliseringsprocesser vid ett familjeutredningshem i Sverige. Syftet var att analysera hur personalen deltar i skapandet av föreställningar om vad som anses vara ”normalt” och ”onormalt”, samt hur dessa föreställningar är sammanflätade med föreställningar om klass, kön och etnicitet. Den andra studien bedrevs tillsammans med Siv Fahlgren och var en analys av ett pedagogiskt material – en populär grundbok inom socialt arbete. Studien analyserade hur författarna implicit konstruerade ett "vi" och ett "de" som var knutet till föreställningar om klass, kön, etnicitet, samt erfarenheter av att vara "klient."

Under 2005-2006 arbetade jag som forskare och redaktör inom Utredning om Makt och Institutionell Diskriminering. Tillsammans med Masoud Kamali arbetade jag med boken: Utbildningens Dilemma: Demokratiska ideal och andrafierande praxis SOU 2006:40. Där arbetade jag utöver som redaktör också som forskare och publicerade två studier utifrån en institutionell diskriminerings perspektiv; det ena en om studie och yrkesvägledarnas vägledning, den andra om uteslutningsmekanismer inom akademin.

Undervisning:

◾Makt och kategoriseringar i socialt arbete (A nivå) ◾Familj och Migration (B nivå) ◾Human Rights and Social Work (HRSW) Research Methods (D nivå).

På doktorand nivå:

Forskningsetik i socialt arbete (kursansvarig)

Teori och perspektiv för socialt arbete

Handleder inom grund, avancerad, doktorand nivå.