Research project Creating Future Welfare

This project explores digitalization and automation by focusing on the hybrid character of welfare services and how knowledge regimes shift over time. Two empirical areas – social work and psychotherapy offered within public health care – are in focus.

Research questions focus on: what knowledge and value positions precede the development of tools and devices for digitalisation and automation? What models of knowledge and groups of expertise are involved and how? How are values considered in practice when digital/automated devices are developed? What assumptions about the practices and the intended professional user are the tools based on? 

The research traces how knowledge regimes have evolved over time. Data include news media coverage, sector specific publications, and policy documents. For the psychotherapy case we will also conduct witness seminars with professionals to capture previous struggles that have shaped current developments. We conduct in-depth studies of current and ongoing developments through interviews with IT professionals and welfare professionals involved in this development, and meeting ethnography. The development of the future welfare state is a national concern, especially in areas such as social work and psychiatric care, where needs already exceed resources. The knowledge that this project generates will contribute with a more informed understanding of the implications of the hybrid character of the current making of future welfare, and the knowledge regimes that underlie it.

Project leader: Linda Soneryd
Researchers: Dominik Döllinger, Lovisa Näslund   

Funded by Forte (4 875 000 SEK) during 2025-2027.