Director of Studies

My thesis Present Absences: Exploring the posthumanist entanglements of school absenteeism in Pedagogic practices from 2016, Linköping University, investigates how school absenteeism as a material-discursive phenomenon is produced in  practices of humans and nonhumans, when absences and presences are registered and managed through digital technologies. In the thesis, posthumanist theorizing is put to work with a special focus on how the research apparatuses enable some realities to come to life, while impeding other.

As the PI of the research project Children in research. Investigating preschool children’s experiences as participants in randomized control trials I investigated children’s perspectives on research and on being part of a research project. Through a multitheoretical perspective, the project explored methodologies to research children's participation as well as how different methodologies within a research project could produce different, and sometimes unexpected, forms of participation. The project is a continuation of the research project Enhancing preschool children´s attention, language and communication skills. A focus on ethics became central to this project.

Methodological questions is a central aspect of my research. Together with Karin Gunnarsson, the Swedish book Introduktion till postkvalitativ metodologi was published in early 2021. The book is an introduction that situates postqualitative methodology in feminist and posthumanist theories, where research is a worlding practice. Through addressing the relationality of inquiry, the book considers knowledge production as both material and discursive and proposes experimenting with research practices.

 

Research project

Ongoing research project:

Supervision, PhD student Jessica Samsioe: Förskolans hall

 

Previous projects:

Children in research: Investigating preschool children’s experiences as participants in randomized control trials

Supervision, PhD student Emilia Åkesson: Teacher Education Becoming Elsewhere

Supervision, PhD student Teresa Elkin Postila: (In)finite water: A study of how preschool children as connoisseurs engage in social environmental issues

Supervision, PhD student Frederikke Skaaning Knage (Aarhus University, DPU): "Skolevægring"

Previous research projects: Children as agents within a research apparatus. Producing knowledge on children's experiences and perspectives on being part of a research project. Part of the project Enhancing preschool children´s attention, language and communication skills: An interdisciplinary study of socio-emotional learning and computerized attention training

A selection from Stockholm University publication database

• Advancing feminist relationality in childhood studies

  2023. Linnea Bodén, Tanja Joelsson. Childhood

  Article

  Relationality has become central to Childhood Studies and even described as its ontological ground. Feminist theories offer articulate theorizing on relationalities, yet feminist ideas of relationality have not had a significant impact on Childhood Studies. Through focusing on feminist notions of corporeal specificity, sexual-temporal difference and asymmetry, and transcorporeality, this paper argues that feminist theorizations open up a space to engage with childhood and children’s lives as not only relational or entangled, but as inevitably imbricated in relations of power.

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• Child Studies Multiple: Collaborative play for thinking through theories and methods

  2023. Anna Sparrman (et al.). Culture Unbound. Journal of Current Cultural Research 15 (1)

  Article

  This text is an exploration of collaborative thinking and writing through theories, methods, and experiences on the topic of the child, children, and childhood. It is a collaborative written text (with 32 authors) that sprang out of the experimental workshop Child Studies Multiple. The workshop and this text are about daring to stay with mess, “un-closure” , and uncertainty in order to investigate the (e)motions and complexities of being either a child or a researcher. The theoretical and methodological processes presented here offer an opportunity to shake the ground on which individual researchers stand by raising questions about scientific inspiration, theoretical and methodological productivity, and thinking through focusing on process, play, and collaboration. The effect of this is a questioning of the singular academic ‘I’ by exploring and showing what a plural ‘I’ can look like. It is about what the multiplicity of voice can offer research in a highly individualistic time. The article allows the reader to follow and watch the unconventional trial-and-error path of the ongoing-ness of exploring theories and methods together as a research community via methods of drama, palimpsest, and fictionary.

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• In the middle of a standardized test: The emerging relations of young children in research

  2022. Linnea Bodén. Contemporary Issues in Early Childhood, 1-18

  Article

  The performance of standardized tests is an ongoing matter of concern for childhood researchers.Standardized tests are often described as neglecting the ethical complexities of doing research withyoung children. However, this critique is primarily presented in general terms, and does not attendto the locality and specificity of particular test situations. With this as a starting point, the aim ofthis article is to challenge a narrow understanding of standardized tests as activities done ‘on’ chil-dren and examine the complexities of emerging relations in test situations performed in Swedishpreschools. Through analysing video recordings made as part of an intervention project, the articlefocuses on the practices that surface in test situations with four- to six-year-olds. Inspired byHaraway and Strathern, the article puts to work a relational approach to analysing the test situa-tions. This approach contributes with an understanding in which the contextual details are takeninto account, which in turn highlights how the atypical and the moving are often the standard instandardized testing. The insights from a relational analysis point to important aspects to considerin the performance of standardized tests: it matters to attune to and problematize a narrow under-standing of standardized tests; it matters to consider the local specificities; and it matters to scru-tinize in new ways the relations between children and researchers.

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• Introduktion till postkvalitativ metodologi

  2021. Gunnarsson Karin, Linnea Bodén.

  Book

  Genom att introducera en postkvalitativ metodologi tar denna bok ett samlat grepp kring frågor om formulerandet av forskningsproblem, forskningsetiska överväganden samt konstruerandet och analyserandet av empiriskt material. Postkvalitativ metodologi beskrivs utifrån fyra centrala ingångar: posthumanistisk teori; forskning som verklighetsskapande; sammanvävning av diskurs, materialitet och affekt samt en feministisk ansats.

  Boken belyser hur postkvalitativ metodologi erbjuder experimenterande tillvägagångssätt och är en prövande berättelse om hur kunskap kan produceras och hur världen kan undersökas med ‘en metodologi i blivande’. Den är således inte någon handbok eller manual för hur forskning ska bedrivas utan ett teoretiskt och metodologiskt erbjudande som bland annat utforskar frågor om ontologi, epistemologi och etik.

  Med sin specifika utgångspunkt i postkvalitativ metodologi ger boken vägledning och inspiration inom många olika områden och vetenskapliga discipliner. Den är därför ett sällskap för studenter och forskare att arbeta tillsammans med i genomförandet av ett forskningsprojekt. Boken vänder sig framförallt till studenter på avancerad nivå, forskarstudenter samt forskare som undrar vad det innebär att arbeta och skapa kunskap med posthumanistisk teori.

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• On, to, with, for, by

  2021. Linnea Bodén. Children's Geographies

  Article

  The ethics of the participation of children in research have attracted the attention of childhood researchers for thirty years. By analysing central scholarly work in childhood sociology and in early childhood education research, the aim of this paper is to unfold, but also queer how ethics are articulated within literature that discusses children in research. Through the methodology of tracing-and-mapping, a map is constructed that displays how children in research are articulated in relation to the prepositions on, to, with, for and by. The map shows how these prepositions form a value scale, underpinned by certain philosophical assumptions about ethics. By relating this to a randomized control trial (RCT) study performed in Swedish preschools, the paper highlights the fact that it is not necessarily more ethical if the research is done by children, than on children. This contributes to a renewed and extended reflection on ethics, that throughly problematize a placing of research on a ‘scale of ethics’ – ranging from bad to good.

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• Relational Materialism

  2020. 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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Show all publications by Linnea Bodén at Stockholm University