I conduct research on how reflection can promote health, the exchange of knowledge, and wellbeing in the workplace. My primary interest is teachers and how reflection within the faculty can constitute a positive resource. My research employs a health-promoting and participant-oriented approach.

My academic journey has been eclectic and has taken me down many different paths. Following a Bachelor’s Degree in Cultural Anthropology and a ten-year career at the Swedish Red Cross, I went back to school and graduated with a degree in Public Health Education. I then chose to specialise in Public Health Sciences, which led to third-cycle studies that culminated in a PhD in May 2017. My thesis related to the investigation of salutogenic resources in the everyday activities of primary school teachers and how an intervention in the form of peer-group reflection could impact work-related learning and the wellbeing of teachers.

The two subjects of my first-cycle degrees, Cultural Anthropology and Public Health Education, have one thing in common. In both areas, the professional starts out from a perspective of a fundamental respect for those you meet. As a professional, you are expected to have the knowledge and expertise that allows you to assist the people you meet in different ways – but the knowledge of what is best for those people lies with them personally. Within cultural anthropology, this is referred to as an emic perspective. Within public health education, we instead talk about empowerment and the importance of active participation in the research project or in the health-promoting intervention. But the basic concept is the same.

After defending my thesis, I started working on the Nursing Programme at Kristianstad University. There, I encountered the same approach that I had been working with in cultural anthropology and public health education, but from another angle and using a different term: person-centred care. The same inside perspective as before, but in a different context. The emic perspective, the participant-oriented approach and the person-centred approach have thus been a common thread in my academic career since I was in my 20s.

After receiving my PhD, the majority of my working hours have been devoted to teaching. But there has been a little room for research as well. In 2017–2018, I participated in a collaboration where teachers on the Nursing Programme worked with librarians on a joint research project. The aim of this research was to investigate changes in the search strategies and research techniques employed by nursing students, as their degree projects most often consist of literature studies.

In 2018–2019, I was engaged in the ongoing follow-up of a research project regarding health-promoting development at an upper-secondary school for students with special needs. The general aim of the project was to use different activities to promote the students’ physical and mental health and their learning. The teachers at the school were using peer-group reflection as a central part of the project, and my role was to monitor this activity.

One research project that is in the initial stage involves a collaboration with colleagues within the research environment Man – Health – Society (MHS) and concerns a meta study on the concept of “inclusion” from various perspectives, such as nursing, public health sciences and work science.