Ina Hallström

About me

I am a PhD candidate in gender studies as of Spring 2017. My PhD project deals with lived experience and recognition of the chronic illness endometriosis. I explore how experiences of illness are shaped by the ways in which the surrounding society, in the form of welfare state, working life, and close relationships, responds to the individual in need of healthcare and support. How does recognition, or misrecognition, affect experiences of body and illness?  

I have a background in Gender Studies and Cinema Studies. My primary research interests revolve around human being as embodied intersubjectivity, namely: how bodies are lived as social, relational, and political subjects which cannot be separated from their situation, materiality and surroundings. I want to explore how we can understand the ongoing "flow of recognition" which is crucial for becoming of subject and world alike. These interests bring me close to central questions within feminist phenomenology, philosophy of recognition, continental philosophy, crip theory, welfare state research, as well as intersectional perspectives on bodies and power. Within my fields of interest, I want to contribute with empirical research and theory development. 

In my MA thesis, I analyzed the role of recognition for women's lived experience of austerity politics in the Swedish welfare state (in Swedish): The Chain of Precarity: Embodying Austerity Politics in the Swedish Welfare State.

Research projects

Ongoing

Completed

Painful Subjects: Endometriosis, Experience and Recognition

My PhD project “Painful Subjects: Endometriosis, Embodiment and Recognition” is an interrogation of the chronic illness endometriosis, focusing on the relation between recognition and the lived experience of a condition that is invisible to others, difficult to diagnose and scarcely recognized in social and cultural as well as medical contexts.