• Supervising doctoral students
• Interviewing Children and Young People

Other assignments

• Board member, Faculty board, Faculty of Social Sciences
• Board member, Stockholm Centre for the Right´s of the Child

Media

Video: How can we increase the visibility of vulnerable children?, Stockholm University profile area Children´s Rights & Conditions

Large research initiative on children, migration and integration, 2016

Stockholm University Strategic partnership against bullying: Wallenberg Foundation supports research against bullying

Research projects at Friends International Center against Bullying, Friends

Key words

Vulnerable children and youths, the perspective of the child, the voice of the child, developmental psychology, crime against children and youths, children as offenders, investigative interviewing, treatment, bullying in schools and on the Internet

Research interests

Cederborg's research is mostly about vulnerable children, youths and their families who are in need of treatment and support from society at large. She is interested in how family members interact but also in how authorities take care of vulnerable people and their realities. An ambition with her studies is also to further understand how children and youth report their everyday life experiences. In addition, her research tries to understand implications of vulnerability.

Research projects

• Bullying as discursive practice
• Trafficking for sexual purposes (dissertation 2015)
• Child Perspectives in the Asylum Process for Unaccompanied Minors (dissertation 2016)
• Handicapped children as alleged witnesses

Doctoral projects

• Children’s exposure to peer bullying in schools
• Children and youth as perpetrators
• In Search of a Home : Children in the Swedish Asylum-Seeking Process (dissertation 2016)
• Children and youth’s interaction and self-representational narratives on public social networking settings online
• Sexual exploitation of children and youth on the internet

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Evaluating the Quality of Investigative Interviews Conducted After the Completion of a Training Program

  2021. Ann-Christin Cederborg (et al.). Investigative Interviewing Research & Practice (II-RP) 11 (1), 40-52

  Article

  A previous study conducted in Sweden showed that criminal investigators who participated in a 6‐month course, including a systematic and extensive training program based on a flexible protocol and during which they received extended supervision, were able to reduce their use of option‐posing and suggestive questions and used more open‐ended questions at the end of the training. However, that study did not determine whether the participants continued to employ preferred interview techniques in the months after the course concluded. In the present study, therefore, we evaluated interviews conducted by 66 Swedish criminal investigators who were given the same training as the previous participants. They attended four different courses between the autumn term of 2013 and the spring term of 2015.The present study specifically focused on changes in interview quality from before the course started, to the final interview at the end of the course and interviews subsequently conducted four months after the course was completed. The coding distinguished between open‐questions (invitations, directives) and risky questions (option‐posing and suggestive prompts). We found that, over time, the participants made increased use of recommended types of questions (invitations and directive questions) and reduced use of risky question types (option‐posing and suggestive questions). This suggests that the training program enhanced the investigators’ interview behavior and that they maintained their good practices after completing the course. This is an important finding because inappropriate interviewing can undermine the legal rights of both alleged victims and suspects. 

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• Power relations in pre-school children's play

  2021. Ann-Christin Cederborg. Early Child Development and Care 191 (4), 612-623

  Article

  As few studies have investigated how pre-school children produce and negotiate social positions when powerful positions are claimed, this study explores how 3–5 year-old children construct the social order of peer play when balancing the power game within the interaction. This is a video documented ethnographical case study where the methodology used is inspired by conversation analysis. The findings are that young children, just like older children, can build up and maintain asymmetrical relations during play by jointly co-constructing status positions through their use of language, body space and objects. The subordinates display legitimation of power when their superior playmate utilizes obvious tools to act and maintain their high-status position. However, positioning themselves in power play may imply that they have to endure unpleasant and unfriendly treatment, and this experience provides knowledge of how to dominate others and act from subordinate positions, where some are ‘marginalized and others privileged’.

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• Young children's play

  2020. Ann-Christin Cederborg. Early Child Development and Care 190 (5), 778-790

  Article

  This study explores how 3–5 year-old children negotiate participation rights during peer play in a preschool in Sweden. The interest is on how they build relations moment-by-moment. I specifically analyze how they negotiate participation rights with a focus on how they include and exclude each other in the ongoing activity. This is an ethnographic study, and the method is inspired by conversation analysis where the verbal and non-verbal interaction is studied sequentially. The findings are that even very young children are capable of advanced social acts when playing together. Such capacities may include face-threatening acts but also solidarity towards one or more participants. It is important that face-threatening strategies are recognized and addressed as soon as possible because children can need help to find alternative ways to behave when in conflict with one another. Otherwise there is a risk that such strategies, when repeated, cause harm to those children exposed.

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• Barn- och elevombudets utredningar och beslut efter anmälan om kränkningar i skolan

  2019. Ann-Christin Cederborg. Festskrift till Wiveka Warnling Conradson, 73-86

  Chapter

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• The quality of question types in Swedish police interviews with young suspects of serious crimes

  2019. Ulrika Winerdal, Ann-Christin Cederborg, Johanna Lindholm. The Police Journal 92 (2), 136-149

  Article

  This study explores how juvenile offenders in Sweden between the age of 15 and 17 are interviewed by police officers when suspected of homicide crimes. The quality of question types was assessed in 47 authentic interviews. The findings show that the police officers used option-posing and suggestive questions most frequently and social pressure was used in three predominating ways: to confront, to challenge and to appeal for a confession. The conclusion is that the police officers’ question style to a large extent contradicts recommendations for how to interview children. There is therefore a need to develop an evidence-based interview practice for interviewing young suspects.

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• Assertions and aspirations

  2017. Lisa Ottosson, Marita Eastmond, Ann-Christin Cederborg. Children's Geographies 15 (4), 426-438

  Article

  Research on asylum-seeking children tends to disregard those in parental care. In particular, little is known about children’s own perspectives. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Sweden, this article explores the ways in which accompanied children experience and seek to overcome challenges posed by asylum reception. The focus is on children’s ambition and ability to form their everyday life, given their ambiguous position of tentative emplacement. Theoretical inspiration is sought in Ortner’s ‘agency of personal projects’ and de Certeau’s concept of ‘tactics’, analysed through the prism of liminality. The study found that while some tactics aimed at avoiding situations and settings that made children uncomfortable, others involved influencing their situation through pursuing ‘personal projects’. Many children’s strivings were directed at creating ‘a normal life’ and a place for themselves in Swedish society. The findings challenge the idea that accompanied children are more protected from difficulties and responsibilities than those seeking asylum alone.

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Show all publications by Ann-Christin Cederborg at Stockholm University