Open Seminar at Score: Maria Arnelid

Seminar

Date: Thursday 27 November 2025

Time: 10.00 – 11.30

Location: Score, Frescativägen 14 A, Stockholm University

Welcome to a seminar on Thursday 27 November 2025 with Maria Arnelid, PhD in Gender Studies, postdoctoral researcher in Occupational Therapy at Linköping University.

The Imaginaries and Politics of Welfare Technology: Renegotiating Elder Care Through Technology for an Ageing Population.

 

“Welfare technology” is used in politics and policy documents to describe technology aiming to improve welfare through increased safety, activity, participation, and independence for those with (or who risk developing) disabilities. This thesis focuses on how welfare technology is developed, tested and implemented in elder care. It draws on semi-structured interviews with municipal decision-makers and an ethnographic study following the development of a conversation partner robot. It aims to show how sociotechnical and robotic imaginaries of welfare technology inform and relate to the decision-making practices of municipal care organizations and robotics research. This includes paying close attention to how imaginaries and decision-making practices in this context imply renegotiated ideals and practices of care and care work.

The analysis shows tensions between how different actors imagine the promises of welfare technology, and between imaginaries of welfare technology for elder care and the characteristics and limitations of the organizations and technologies they rely on to materialize. It also points to how the development and implementation of welfare technology renegotiated ideals and practices of care away from an emphasis on human contact toward independent and remote care. 

The seminar will be held in English.

Photo: Juliana Wiklund

 

Last updated: November 7, 2025

Source: Score

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