My thesis concerns social participation and togetherness among older adults in a home care context, within the research project STAY-IN-TOUCH.
Knowledge Lens
As an occupational therapist, I always carry with me an activity lens, where people's opportunities for subjectively meaningful activities are at the center. I gravitate towards a relational understanding of human activity, but also transactional perspectives where our actions are understood as a product of many different contextual aspects. I am fascinated by the interplay between theory and empirics, and I enjoy working with co-creative methods where research findings have direct contact with the context and the people affected by the knowledge-building process. I am also interested in other critical approaches, where the influence of language and images on how we perceive the world, and thus our horizon of possibilities, is considered. I readily incorporate sociological perspectives into the research questions that intrigue me, such as how power dynamics and cultural aspects affect people's activities and participation.
Target Audience and Area
The target audience I am primarily interested in is seniors. More specifically, I am interested in seniors' conditions for social participation. By social participation, I mean being able to continue living one's life and doing what feels important together with the people who are important to you.
This may involve research that seeks to create knowledge about social participation itself and what affects it in a more overarching way. It may also involve research at a concrete level that strives to create structures that facilitate social participation among seniors.