Danielle Ekman Ladru
Contact
Name and title: Danielle Ekman Ladru
Phone: +46812076226
Workplace: Department of Child and Youth Studies Länk till annan webbplats.
Visiting address Room 450Svante Arrhenius väg 21A
Postal address Barn- och ungdomsvetenskapliga institutionen106 91 Stockholm
About me
I am an associate professor and senior lecturer at the department of Child and Youth Studies at Stockholm university. I am currently head of the section of Child and Youth Studies at the department. My main interest is at the intersection of childhood studies and social and urban geography. My research concerns the spatial dimensions of childhood – how children and families live, move, and create a sense of belonging in urban environments. Drawing on an everyday life approach, I apply critical perspectives on childhood, spatiality, and mobility at the intersection of human geography and childhood studies, using ethnographic and qualitative methods.
My research clusters around three themes:
Children's spatiality, mobility, and safety – how children and young people construct place identities and negotiate belonging and exclusion in segregated urban spaces, and how they navigate risk, gender, and safety in public space together with their families. This includes questions about how the physical design of living environments – including asylum accommodation – shapes children's sense of security.
Urban planning, housing, and sustainability – how planning systems include or exclude children's perspectives, and what consequences urban densification has for children's access to outdoor spaces. The theme also encompasses how families in apartment buildings organise their everyday lives, and how vertical living shapes children's play, mobility, and well-being.
Preschool, learning, and ideas about childhood – the time-spatial organisation of mobile and inner-city preschools, and how children are socialised, learn, and practice citizenship in urban environments. This theme also addresses how ideas about nature, childhood, and national belonging are intertwined in educational policy and early childhood practice.
Danielle Ekman Ladru (previously van der Burgt) is Senior Lecturer in Child and Youth Studies and Associate professor (docent) in Social and Economic Geography. Her main field of interest is child and Youth studies, Mobilities and Geography focusing on children's, young people's and families' social geographies, everyday mobilities and access to public space.
Her current research is in the project CHILD-SAFE: How Do We Create a Safe Physical Environment for Children in Swedish Asylum Accommodation? (Formas 2026-00140) on the development of practice-based knowledge on how the physical environment in asylum accommodation can be designed and adapted to strengthen children’s safety. The project is a collaboration between Save the Children (together with the Swedish Migration Agency), Uppsala University and Stockholm University. Using methods such as site analyses, safety walks with children, interviews, surveys and co-creative workshops, children
and key actors are involved. The goal is to develop local and national policies and guidelines that support children’s rights-based work with the physical environment in asylum accommodation, contributing to increased safety for children in the asylum process.
Her precious research is on mobile preschools and children's mobility:
- Mobility, informal learning and citizenship in mobile preschools, financed by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences. Project leader: Danielle Ekman Ladru
- A citywide classroom: time-space aspects of mobile preschool pedagogy, financed by The Swedish Research Council. Project leader: Katarina Gustafson
And on sustainable urbanism and children's everyday mobility:
- Sustainable vertical childhoods? Family apartment life and children's everyday mobility and play, financed by Formas. Project leader: Danielle Ekman Ladru
- A city-wide preschool yard? Challenges and possibilities for supporting innercity preschools' mobility and space for play in dense urban environments, financed by Formas. Project leader: Katarina Gustafson
Latest publications
Joelsson, T., & Ekman Ladru, D. (2021). Cracks in the well-plastered façade of the Nordic model: reflections on inequalities in housing and mobility in (post-) coronavirus pandemic Sweden. Children's Geographies, 1-9.
Joelsson, Tanja och Ekman Ladru, Danielle (2021), «Den flertydiga tryggheten: risker, platser och mobilitet i barns och ungas vardagsliv». I (O)tryggt. Texter om makt, plats och motstånd, (red. Rönnblom, M., Sandberg, L. och Linander, I.), Premiss förlag.
Gustafson, K., Ekman Ladru, D., & Joelsson, T. (2020). Säkerhet samt upplevelsebaserat lärande i en variation av lärmiljöer–två centrala policyer i mobila förskolor. Nordic Studies in Education, 40(3), 229-248.
Ojala, M., Ekman Ladru, D., & Gustafsson, K. (2020). Parental reasoning on choosing the mobile preschool: Enabling sustainable development or adjusting to a neoliberal society?. Early Childhood Education Journal.
Gustafson, K. & Ekman Ladru, D. (2020): Children’s socialization into the mobile preschool: a priming event collectively performed by novice children, ‘oldtimers’, and pedagogues, European Early Childhood Education Research Journal, DOI: 10.1080/1350293X.2020.1755496
Ekman Ladru, D, Gustafson, K. Children's collective embodiment—Mobility practices and materialities in mobile preschools. Popul Space Place. 2020;e2322.
Harju, A., Balldin, J., Ekman Ladru, D. & Gustafson, K. (2020). Children’s education in ‘good’ nature: Perceptions of activities in nature spaces in mobile preschools. Global studies of childhood.
Ladru, Danielle Ekman, & Katarina Gustafson. "‘Yay, a downhill!’: Mobile preschool children’s collective mobility practices and ‘doing’space in walks in line." Journal of Pedagogy 9.1 (2018): 87-107.