My research

My current research interests are about ecocritical, feminist and queer perspectives on science education in preschool with a specific focus on inter-species relations. A particular interest includes how feminist and queer theoretical approaches can act to create new and other encounters between children and non-human species as well as between children and science. Since 2007, I have worked cross-disciplinary with environmental sustainability issues at the National Agency for Education, the Keep Sweden Tidy Foundation and the former Stockholm Insitute of Education. From September 2021 until December 2022 I was a guest researcher and affiliated researcher at the Centre for Gender Research at Uppsala university. I am co-organizer of the Seminar for Feminist Theory and Methods at BUV and member of the Editorial Board for the journals Gender and Education and Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology (RERM). 

Networks and groups:

Humanimal research group, Uppsala university 

The Swedish STS group https://swests.org

The Eco- and Bioart lab, Linköping university 

Publications (in selection)

Moberg, E. (2024). Minecraft and Super Mario as enacted in a preschool setting: Children’s engagements with digital popular culture beyond player–interface–screen ecologies. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/14639491231225225

Moberg, E. (2024). Tistelfjärilar, bläckfiskar och mänsklig överordning: att göra feministiska analyser av natur och kultur. I Genus och kultur (eds.) Woube, A. and Lindelöf, K. Stockholm: Makadam förlag.

Moberg, E. (2023). On snails and eels – exploring alignments of epistemic cultures in early childhood education and literary fiction. Science and Technology Studies, Special issue: Alignment work

Moberg, E. och Halvars, B. (2022). Förkroppsligade kunskaper om väder och klimat - förskolans roll i Antropocen. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige. (Temanummer: Antropocen i en skandinavisk utbildningskontext)

Bodén, L., Lenz Taguchi, H., Moberg, E., & Taylor, C. (2020). Relational Materialism. In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education. Oxford University Press.  

Moberg, E. (2018). Enacting affirmative critique: exploring the conjunctions and overlaps among Actor-network theory and Feminist New Materialist Studies in Early Childhood Curriculum Studies, 9(1) Reconceptualising Education Research Methodologies.

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Attributing human traits to other species as alignment work: exploring possibilities of a terrestrial knowledge production

  2023. Emelie Moberg. Science and Technology Studies

  Article

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• Jordbundna erfarenheter, kunskaper och kopplingar om väder och klimat: förskolan i Antropocen

  2022. Bodil Halvars, Emelie Moberg. Pedagogisk forskning i Sverige 27 (3), 72-95

  Article

  Föreliggande studie har som syfte att undersöka vilka kunskaper och erfarenheter som förskollärare lyfter fram i samtal kring förskolebarns utforskande av väder och klimat som naturvetenskapliga fenomen. Det empiriska materialet omfattas av deltagande observationer vid ett nätverksmöte med förskollärare som under läsåret 2020/2021 har temat väder och klimat. Med hjälp av begreppen ”terrestri-al” och ”natur-kultur” hämtade från Donna Haraway och Bruno Latour görs analyser av förskollärarnas samtal. Studien visar att de kunskaper och erfarenheter som förskollärare lyfter fram som handlar om kroppsliga upplevelser av natur och väder, men även om en medvetenhet om och kunskap kring människans del i ekologin. Studien visar utöver detta vilka didaktiska frågor och överväganden som aktualiseras i förskollärares samtal om barns utforskande av väder och klimat samt belyser frågan om att göra och synliggöra kopplingar kring naturvetenskap-liga fenomen. I relation till tidigare forskning om didaktiska överväganden inom naturvetenskaplig undervisning i en antropocen tid problematiseras den polarise-rade frågan om att ”lära-om” kontra att ”lära-med” natur och väder i en förskole-kontext.

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• Relational Materialism

  2019. Linnea Bodén (et al.). Oxford Research Encyclopedias

  Chapter

  Relational materialism was first articulated and framed within Actor Network Theory. In educational research, the concept has emerged with the growing influence of Agential Realism and New Material Feminism, and in the engagements in the “turn to materiality” and/or “turn to ontology.” A relational materialist approach to educational studies can be narrowed down to three key principles: the principle of general symmetry; the principle of material semiotics; and the principle of method. The enactment of relational materialism depends on how these principles come to work in the engagement with central educational problems, such as subjectivity, performativity and practice. Relational materialism takes the starting-point in the problems and concerns of human and material actors or agents, for whom the research can make a difference. While doing so, it acknowledges the methodological difficulties and possibilities when carefully attending simultaneously to discourse, materialities and their relations. Striving towards a methodological sensibility, the enactment of relational materialism in education research entails the emergence and creation of more and multiple methods to know the multiple realities of education. This also makes it possible for relational materialist research to become productive of new and additional educational realities that can, perhaps, make an affirmative difference to the actors or agents concerned.

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• Enacting affirmative critique: exploring the conjunctions and overlaps among Actor-network theory and Feminist New Materialist Studies in Early Childhood Curriculum Studies

  2018. Emilie Moberg. Reconceptualizing Educational Research Methodology (RERM) 9 (1)

  Article

  This paper elaborates on alternative versions of critique as produced in an ethnographic field work on the everyday life of a curriculum text in a Stockholm preschool. Assisted by Actor-network theory and Feminist New Materialist methodologies, the paper evolves around three empirical moments where the researcher is depicted as needing to rely on the relational efforts of children, Minecraft figures, concepts, teachers and conversations over coffee. In the paper, Actor network theory and Feminist New Materialist methodologies help to enact alternative versions of critique where dependency and vulnerability is taken as resource. Moreover, a focus on relations and overlaps among entities creates knowledge where for example children and texts are allowed to be strong and vulnerable at the same time. 

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• Exploring the relational efforts making up a curriculum concept—an Actor-network theory analysis of the curriculum concept of children’s interests

  2018. Emilie Moberg. Journal of Curriculum Studies 50 (1), 113-125

  Article

  This paper undertakes an investigation of the ‘life’ of the curriculum concept of children’s interests in a preschool practice. The concept of children’s interests plays a vital role in the Swedish preschool curriculum text and in the preschool field. Strongly inspired by Actor-network theory readings, the paper aims at producing accounts making visible the making of the concept of children’s interests through relations among children, carpets, Minecraft figures, boxes, teachers and schedules in a preschool practice. The paper engages in ethnographic materials generated at a Stockholm preschool over a period of 10 months.

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Show all publications by Emilie Moberg at Stockholm University