Malin Gunnarsson Sylvin PhD Student

I am a PhD candidate in Public Health Sciences at Stockholm University. My research explores the social and cultural dimensions of substance use problems, with a particular focus on how people narrate, negotiate, and make sense of their experiences in everyday life.

In my dissertation Many Facets of Substance Use Problems: Narratives of Normality, Stigma, and Everyday Life in Sweden, I examine how substance use is embedded in routines of work, family, youth, and urban space. Through narrative and walking interviews, I analyze how individuals both maintain and retrospectively reconstruct a sense of normality in the face of stigma and disruption.

My research consists of four studies:

• Performing normality in working life among heavy substance users

  (2022,

  Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs

  ), which shows how individuals manage substance use while sustaining employment through strategies of concealment and impression management. 

  DOI: 

  10.1177/14550725221108796

• Parenting and substance use problems in Sweden: Hiding, disappearing and compensating

  (2025,

  Addiction Research and Theory

  ) - which examines how parents negotiate ideals of responsible parenthood while managing substance use. 

  DOI: 

  10.1080/16066359.2025.2459658

• Doing normality: Retrospective narratives of early substance use

  (manuscript), which explores how adults make sense of their early initiation into alcohol and drugs as part of ordinary family and peer life.

• Walking through stigma: Everyday life, normality, and substance use in urban spaces

  (manuscript), which uses walking interviews to show how people re-narrate and reframe their past substance use through meaningful places and spatial memories.

Together, these studies highlight how substance use problems are socially situated, and by centering people’s own stories, my work contributes to more nuanced and humane understandings of substance use, stigma, and recovery.

Additional relevant studies not included in the dissertation:

• Törrönen, J., Winerdal, U., & Gunnarsson Sylvin, M. (2025). Parenting and heavy substance use: From neutralization theory to actor-network theory to avoid stigmatizing participants.

  Journal of Drug Policy. 

  DOI: 

  10.1016/j.drugpo.2025.104983

• Törrönen, J., Winerdal, U., & Gunnarsson Sylvin, M. (2025). Using drugs to enhance capacities for action in everyday life practices: Analysing addiction stories’ descriptions of the escalation of substance use as counter-narratives.

  Social Science & Medicine. 

  DOI: 

  10.1016/j.socscimed.2025.118245

• Törrönen, J., Samuelsson, E., & Gunnarsson, M. (2020).

  Online Gambling Venues as Rational Actors in Addiction: Applying the actor-network approach to life stories of online gambling.

  International Journal of Drug Policy. 

  DOI: 

  10.1016/j.drugpo.2020.102928