Basic criteria for exchange studies

In order to eligible for a Karlstad University exchange place, administered by the International Office, students should:

• Have studied at least two semesters (of 30 ECTS credits each) at Karlstad University immediately before the start of the exchange period
• At the time of application, be registered as a Karlstad University student and be admitted to full-time studies [1]
• Have passed at least 75% of their courses. The percentage is based on completed semesters at Karlstad University
• Be able to transfer credits from their studies abroad to a degree at Karlstad University
• Study at least one semester full-time at the receiving higher education institution
• Follow the semester periods of the receiving institution and ensure that these can be incorporated into their normal studies at Karlstad University
• Have a good command of English and the language in which tuition is offered (if not English)

If students fail to fulfil one or more of these criteria, they may submit an application for exemption to the International Office together with their application for exchange studies.

[1] Full-time study refers to 30 ECTS credits per semester.

Selection

Exchange places are allocated based on merit ratings. If students have the same merit rating, an assessment is made.

Students who have already been on a semester abroad via Karlstad University may apply again, but their applications will receive a lower priority than the applications of first time applicants.

Students who have started a master’s programme at Karlstad University and have a bachelor’s degree from another university are allocated 6 extra merit points in the placement process.

If there is competition for exchange places, students will be ranked accordingly to:

• Number of credits from Karlstad University
• Grades on completed courses from Karlstad University
• Motivation letter
• Participation in mentoring activities for international students

Calculating students’ merit ratings in the selection process for exchange studies:

ECTS credits  Rating

0-30                1
31-60              2
61-90              3
91-120            4
121-150          5
151-180          6
181-210          7
>210               8

ECTS credits VG/4/5/AB/BA*  Rating

15-30                                       0.5
31-45                                       1
46-60                                       1.5
61-75                                       2
76-90                                       2.5
91-105                                     3
106-120                                   3.5
121-135                                   4

* grade VG/4/5/AB/BA in completed course

Mentoring activities

Students who participated in the host student activities for international students and included this in their application receive 1 point in the selection process.

Motivation letter

Academic justification, attitude and the aim of the exchange are assessed.

Students can only apply for one semester in each application round and decisions about placement cannot be appealed.

To determine whether the information you have found is credible and reliable, you need to evaluate the source of that information critically, regardless of whether the publication is printed or one you have found online. A source always has an author and a message to convey. In assessing the reliability of a source, there are some specific questions which are worth asking, such as:

• Who is the author?
• Who is the publisher?
• To what end or purpose is the text written?
• Does the information presented as factual hold up when compared with other sources?
• Are the sources and references stated?
• Are they primary or secondary sources?
• When was the text written and does the year or date hold any importance for your research?

Academic / Scholarly articles

What distinguishes academic articles above all else is that their quality has been assessed prior to publication. They are published in academic journals and have been reviewed by “referees” who are scholars in the field. This system of checks and balances is known as “peer-review” and goes to ensure the quality of the article.

Further reading about scholarly / academic articles:

• What is a an academic or scholarly article?

To determine whether the information you have found is credible and reliable, you need to evaluate the source of that information critically, regardless of whether the publication is printed or one you have found online. A source always has an author and a message to convey. In assessing the reliability of a source, there are some specific questions which are worth asking, such as:

• Who is the author?
• Who is the publisher?
• To what end or purpose is the text written?
• Does the information presented as factual hold up when compared with other sources?
• Are the sources and references stated?
• Are they primary or secondary sources?
• When was the text written and does the year or date hold any importance for your research?

Academic / Scholarly articles

What distinguishes academic articles above all else is that their quality has been assessed prior to publication. They are published in academic journals and have been reviewed by “referees” who are scholars in the field. This system of checks and balances is known as “peer-review” and goes to ensure the quality of the article.

Further reading about scholarly / academic articles:

• What is a an academic or scholarly article?

One theme can be a power perspective and another is the tension between individual and structure but also the dynamics between them, e.g. through the study of complex "actions". Areas include both organizational and professional studies and issues such as welfare organization, social exclusion/inclusion, migration/integration relations, and tensions between city and country, as well as global/local. Participating researchers are part of multi-disciplinary networks and research is carried out in collaboration with other higher education institutions.

Researchers:

• Ulla Rantakeisu, professor social work
• Marie Nordfeldt, professor social work

Ongoing research

The (new?) role of civil society in combating homelessness. A follow-up study.

Researcher in charge:  Marie Nordfeldt

The role of local civil societies in rural communities

The project is a collaboration between researchers from Ersta Sköndal Bräcke University College, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) and Karlstad University. At Kau, the project is run within the framework of the Centre for Research on Sustainable Social Change. Principal researcher: Marie Nordfeldt.

Experiences of sick leave with a psychiatric diagnosis of a stress-related nature

Study in collaboration with PhD Lena Ede, Karlstad University.

Participating researcher: Ulla Rantakeisu 

LGBTQ perspective on housing

Sub-study in the project "Putting gender perspectives on housing" run at the Institute for Housing and Urban Research at Uppsala University.

Project manager: Irene Molina, Professor of Human Geography, Uppsala University.

Responsible at Karlstad University: Marie Nordfeldt, co-author Ulla Rantakeisu.

Where do social workers go?

The project funded by FOU Welfare Värmland is a survey of where the social workers we have examined at Karlstad University between the years 2007 and 2018 have gone. 

Responsible researcher: Mona Sundh, participating researcher Eva Alfredsson Olsson.

Psychiatric comorbidity in LVM care: increased knowledge for promoted care at the individual and structural level.

The project was funded by the National Board of Institutional Affairs and Karlstad University.

Participating researchers: Ingrid Rystedt (project manager), Mona Sundh, Eva Alfredsson Olsson, Kim Mueser, Mark McGovern.

Participating researchers

• Ulla Rantakeisu
• Caroline Östman
• Marie Nordfeldt
• Mona Sundh

ONGOING DOCTORAL THESES

Sandra Andersson

Sheltered housing for women who have been victims of partner violence

The thesis examines the social organization of the initiative protected housing from the position of women exposed to violence. The thesis is an institutional ethnography based on interviews with women who have been placed in sheltered housing, observations and interviews with social workers, as well as focus group interviews with staff in non-profit, municipal and private shelters.

Kristofer Nilsson

Public perceptions of social services: opinions, trust and the public construction of social work in Sweden

The thesis examines the public's beliefs, thoughts and (above all) trust in social services and social workers. Furthermore, it examines what might be behind the beliefs and trust and whether they have any practical consequences, partly for social workers in their professional practice and partly for social services as an organization in terms of, for example, legitimacy.

However, the modelling and computation of such groups of people is still in its infancy. In principle, there are two main approaches to modelling crowds: as an interacting particle system (microscopic) or as a PDE for the crowd density (macroscopic).

Adrian Muntean and his collaborators develop and study models in a measure-theoretical framework, which incorporates the micro- and macroscopic views as special cases. Their emphasis is on the influence of walls and obstacles (boundary conditions); anisotropy (people do not perceive their surroundings equally well in all directions); and two-scale effects (leader-group interaction). The research started off at CASA (Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands) and continues now at the Karlstad University, Sweden. The main results are reported in the PhD theses by Joep Evers (2015) and by Alessandro Corbetta (2016), as well as in the MSc thesis by Omar Richardson (2016).

Together with some of the most prominent Nordic trademarks in Food & Beverage, Elvenite helps their clients to digitalise their processes and streamline their operations in a sustainable way in order to provide an excellent customer experience. Among other areas, Elvenite focuses on:

• Pisciculture
• Dairy and Deli
• Brewing
• FMCG

The food industry faces an entirely new challenge with new customer demands owing to
globalisation, urbanisation and digitalisation. The food production and consumption of tomorrow will not be the same as today. Big Data, AI and Advanced Analysis all provide opportunities for creating entirely new services and solutions.

- In general, when it comes to digitalisation, the food industry is lagging behind, and the conscious customers of today set ever higher standards for producers and suppliers. Nowadays, we want to be able to buy whatever we want, whenever and however we want it. Ever higher demands are also set on food safety, and consumers want to be able to trace the origin of their food. If you want to keep your relevance in the food industry, you have to be able to provide customers and consumers with fast, safe and user-friendly services, Pär says.

Blockchain provides opportunities for tracking goods, and could be used to trace the origins of certain foodstuff. In this way, producers and suppliers may retain a good relationship to the customer. Amazon Go, RECQ. Pinchos and free two-hour delivery services are all examples highlighted by Pär, where opportunities of digitalisation have been successfully taken advantage of.

- We cannot just continue doing what we have always been doing. To us, this is a way of combining new technologies with smart solutions and of working towards continual improvements in helping clients in an industry that is undergoing an almost total change. This makes working at Elvenite especially enjoyable, Pär says.

SNITS provide students with a start of their careers
SNITS is a collaboration group that provides exchanges between companies, Karlstad University and IT students. The arrange field trips, guest lectures, breakfast meetings, mentoring programmes, internships and degree projects.

- To Elvenite, SNITS is an amazing opportunity to get in touch with curious and gifted students. We get a chance to show them what we have to offer, which hopefully gives students an opportunity when choosing their fields of study. I would like to say that SNITS is one of the first steps towards employment, Pär says.

SNITS consist of representatives from Altar, Askås, CGI, Elvenite, EVRY, Prevas, Redpill Linpro, Sogeti, Stamford, Tieto, ÅF and Compare. Karlstad University is represented by informatics and computer science, as well as a number of IT students.

Idea evaluation is a voting process where citizens can express their likes and dislikes for new innovation projects that may impact their lives. It is common for companies and organizations to ask people what they think of new ideas, but in this context, it is often forgotten that people might vote for or against something they do not fully understand. My article shows that when people struggle to understand an idea - they dislike it.

The article shows that people in general prefer ideas that they think they understand, but they do not always make informed rational decisions. In order to improve the perception of an innovation idea it needs to contain more detailed information on What, Where, When, Who, Why, and How. By providing information on these dimensions in the idea description there is a higher chance of increasing citizens’ comprehension of an idea, and there is a higher chance that the idea will be better perceived by the public. I also find that the most preferred ideas tend to address the issues that the public deems important, whereas the idea’s feasibility and originality plays a less significant role.

These findings are important for innovation managers when they set up crowdsourcing activities for idea evaluation. Managers need to make sure that the ideas contain enough relevant information, so that the public has a higher chance of understanding these ideas and deem them relevant. This will improve the perception of the idea, reduce the comprehension bias, and lead to a more informed decision process.

Link to publication Sukhov, A. (2018). The Role of Perceived Comprehension in Idea Evaluation. Creativity and Innovation Management, 27 (2), pp. 183-195.

Alexandre Sukhov is a PhD student at CTF, Service Research Center at Karlstad University. His research focuses on Innovation Management, and more specifically on the front end of innovation activities. He is one of the teachers in the open online course Idea Management and is involved in teaching and supervising of Industrial Engineering and Management students.

Cultural Studies include courses in:

• History of Ideas
• Art History and Visual Studies

Job prospects

The cultural sector is a dynamic segment of the labour market and there is a great need for skilled labour. Areas of employment include cultural production, cultural coordination, cultural development, cultural administration, management of culture, art and cultural heritage communication, project management, investigative assignments, entrepreneurship connected to cultural experiences, and culture as creative industry. Job opportunities in the cultural sector are varied and a degree in Cultural Studies provides students with a broad, general foundation for future employment.

Studies

As main field of study, Cultural Studies includes a broad selection of courses as part of the Culture, Policy and Management Programme, but also as independent courses for non-programme students. Three semesters of the programme are focused on the cultural sector and content is based on key issues and current questions in the field. In the third and fourth semesters, students take 60 ECTS credits chosen from Film Studies, History, History of Ideas, Art and Visual Studies or Political Science. These courses are also offered as subject courses, so programme students study together with those taking the independent subject courses.

Degree

Cultural Studies can be taken as a major subject in a Bachelor of Arts degree.

Further studies

A Bachelor of Arts degree with a major in Cultural Studies fulfil the admission requirements for different Master’s programmes and thereafter for doctoral studies.

Useful links

• The Swedish Arts Council
• The Swedish Agency for Cultural Policy Analysis
• Region Värmland’s cultural strategy [in Swedish]
• The KULTING student association [in Swedish]

• Beyond the city life. Post-migration experiences of the everyday life for families with young children moving out from a metropolitan area

• Biocultural Heritage and Alternative Food Production (Biokuma)

• Digiterri

• Managing rural communities: The role of local civil societies

• Finalised Projects
   

2022 
 

25 May, Kl.13-14.30 (ZOOM)

Younes Saramifar, Ass. professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

"Of Guns and Gods: cartography of martyrdom amongst Shia militias"

This presentation is based on a book project that emerges from a decade of ethnography among Shia militias in the Middle East and Central Asia. By following material expression of religion, I portray a cartography of martyrdom based on everything except Islamic doctrine. In other words, I follow how nonhumans
become partners of militancy and shape the culture of martyrdom beyond what conventionally understood as Islam.

Corpse, guns, winds, soils, waters and borders amongst other nonhumans collaborate in the formation of militant subjectivities. Militant subjectivities are misunderstood as pious religiously motivated formations.

I argue some religious studies, most terrorism studies and almost all political sciences gaze on militancy have side stepped materiality of combats because of the Islamophobia and Orientalist views that have shaped their misguided epistemologies.

BIOGRAPHY

Younes Saramifar is a cultural anthropologist working along historians in Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is an interdisciplinary scholar working on violence, body, hope, piety and ideas of history. His research follows militancy, religiosity and poetics of body through approaches of material religion, postcolonial thinking and speculative realism. The Middle East and the transnational Shia network at large are his research areas.

Advanced ecological modelling for prioritizing environmental flows and habitat restoration in regulated rivers, E-FLOWS

Timeframe:
Funding: Co-funded by the Knowledge Foundation (KK-stiftelsen) and Karlstad University.
RivEM-contact: John Piccolo, john.piccolo@kau.se
Read more:

• Project page at NRRV.SE

Political procedures and processes at the local and regional levels

European societies in general and the Nordic ones, including Sweden, in particular have undergone changes which entail an increased political and executive role for regional and local agents. The regional level has been relatively poorly manned and in charge of few tasks compared to the local and national levels, but its tasks and obligations are now multiplying.

The changes pertain to both form and content in politics. They are often discussed as a shift from government to governance, which has necessitated a greater focus on more flexible forms of political organisation (in terms of multi-level governance, network, and partnership) and new agents, not least market ones, exerting increased influence on policy. As a result, the traditional boundaries of politics have dissolved, both between politics and economy/markets and between levels, as nation states have taken a different and in many cases less prominent role, while regions and various EU organs have moved into a stronger position. Significantly, the shift from politics to markets means that the logic of the market has increasingly replaced earlier forms of political governance. As a consequence, there are also changes in the conceptions of and conditions for the liberal model of democracy that has constituted the starting point for modern political science analysis.

These changes challenge the way in which we understand and use important political science analyses and concepts, and call for new ways of theorising such concepts. In our research, we aim to study shifts/changes of this kind in terms of three central political science concepts –democracy, politics, and power. The empirical focus of our research is the transformed position and role of regions in the political system.

Social Science Education

What are students in school and at university supposed to learn? Why are they supposed to learn exactly that? And what do learning processes entail? These basic educational questions serve as a starting point for research projects in this area. Another point of departure is the idea that learning processes can be more successful if teachers both possess knowledge of their subject and develop an understanding of its specificity.

Completed and ongoing projects deal with, among other things, European citizen education, the autonomy of social science teachers, methods for developing an interest in societal issues among upper secondary school students in vocational programmes, and grading and assessment in the school subject of social sciences. Research is conducted as part of the Centre for Social Science Education (CSD), where Political Science collaborates with four other social science subjects, and in the graduate school for teachers of History and Social Studies (CSD-FL).

Collaboration

Apart from research and education, collaboration with society at large is important to us. For this reason, political scientists often appear in the media as commentators and experts. We collaborate regularly with Region Värmland, the county administrative board, the county council, municipalities, and other public institutions. A special reference group which includes representatives for public employers alongside teachers and students has been appointed to help us improve.

Students and public employers are brought together at the annual fair Off spring. Political Science collaborates with Society and Defence to arrange a conference on defence and security policy twice each year. Political scientists often contribute by giving lectures in schools, at educational associations, and in other community contexts.

The Swedish r-word: Uses and negotiations of the terms race and racism in contemporary Swedish online and social media discourse
(Tobias Hübinette, Peter Wikström). Funded by the Swedish Research Council. 2020-2023
The purpose of this critical race theoretical, sociolinguistic and discourse analytical project is to investigate how the terms race [ras], racism [rasism], and racist [rasist/rasistisk/-t] are put to use and metalinguistically defined, contested, and negotiated in informal contexts of mediated interactions. The project will be based on case studies of the uses and negotiations of these terms in social media and online discourses across different online platforms, demographic groups, and political persuasions. The project poses questions concerning what discursive contexts the terms race and racism appear in, how they are articulated in terms of denotation and connotation, and how they are received by other interactants in terms of interactional consequences.

• Publication 2021: Equality data as immoral race politics 

Visual Interculturality: Photography in Comparison and Conversation
(Staffan Löfving; Paul Weinberg, University of Johannesburg) Funded by STINT, the Swedish Foundation for International Cooperation in Research and Higher Education. 2021-2022
In a new collaboration with the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, we investigate the role played by photographic images in intercultural communication, and in the social organisation of conflict and conviviality. We develop research projects and educational resources in dialogue with photographers, visual artists and the institutions responsible for a visual heritage in countries where political violence forms part of recent history. This work aims to supplement a traditional focus in intercultural studies on the relation between language and culture with theorisation within the less studied field of visual interculturality.

• First project conference: Photographs in Conversation, December 10 2021

• The Aesthetics of Evil: Memory and Media in Nazi Perpetrator Fiction. (Alexander Kofod-Jensen)
  PhD Project with internal funding (2016-2021)
  
  My PhD project explores how memory and intermediality work in contemporary novels on World War II. Focus is first and foremost on the ways in which the Nazi perpetrator is described and narrates from a first–person point of view in a variety of novels such as Jonathan Littell’s The Kindly Ones (Les Bienveillantes 2006), Marcel Beyer’s The Karnau Tapes (Flughunde1995), Martin Amis’ The Zone of Interest (2014),  and Simon Pasternak’s Dødszoner (2013).
   
• Teachers on the borders. (Christina Olin-Scheller, Niklas Gericke, Johan Samuelsson
  Funded by the Swedish Research Council. (2018-2020)
  
  The overall aim of the project is to deepen knowledge about how teachers of Swedish, History and Biology interpreted the demands of progressivism in Sweden before the big school reforms in the 1950s.
   
• Teaching with Learning Management Systems. Digitalized instructional practices and transformations of subject specific content in the connected classroom. (Christina Olin-Scheller, Marie Tanner, Johan Samuelsson, Yvonne Liljekvist)
  Funded by the Swedish Research Council. (2020-2022)
  
  This project focuses on the increasingly prevalent use of Learning Management Systems (LMS) in Swedish upper secondary schools, as part of a general digitalisation of classrooms. We focus on LMS systems that are used directly for teaching purposes and investigate how use of LMS changes the classroom as a space for learning. The purpose is to gain knowledge about how use of LMS is of importance for how teaching and learning are construed in classroom interaction, with a specific interest in the school subjects Swedish, Mathematics and History. Research questions are: 1. How is teachers’ and students’ participation in teaching and learning trajectories accomplished when using LMS? 2. How is content of different subjects construed and represented when Learning Management Systems are used? 3. What possibilities and constraints for the organisation and content of teaching do the structures and content created on the LMS afford? Theoretically, the project draws on a media-ecological perspective and on conversation analysis (CA) to investigate how learning and teaching trajectories are accomplished in interaction involving LMS. The study has a video-ethnographic approach, which includes filming of students and teachers, log books, content analysis and interviews. Project findings will contribute to specialised knowledge of learning and teaching and the way in which subject content is shaped in relation to LMS. On a broader level, it will contribute to critical discussions about the terms for education and the role of the classroom in the digitalised school.
   

• Easy reading? Easy reading for young people. The market, the readers och the texts. (Christina Olin-Scheller, Anna Nordenstam)
  Internal funding. (2017-2021)
  
  This project aims to deepen the understanding of easy reading literary texts for young adults.
   

• Transformations – school subjects, subject-specific teaching and learning. (Christina Olin-Scheller) Funded by ROSE (Research on Subject Specific Education). (2017-2020)
  
  ROSE research centres on the broad issue of how a content is manifested in teaching and perceived by students and teachers. One way of addressing this problem area is to employ the concept of transformation. The transformation concept involves an interest in what is to be learnt, the teaching content and the interaction between the transformation and the specific practice. It also covers the issue of the relationship between the content of a school subject and the academic discipline. Problematising this relationship from different perspectives has been a prominent feature of ROSE research. Teaching content is transformed in different ways depending on the context in which it is enacted. An overall common research interest in ROSE is how different practices affect and shape subject content. Some of the practices studied are: test design and assessment practice, textbook design and the use of textbooks, teaching literature and teachers’ use of language.
   

• Scandinavian Serial Killer Narratives. (Morten Feldtfos Thomsen, Sofia Wijkmark)
  Internal funding (2020-2023
  
  This project investigates Scandinavian serial killer narratives in literature, film and television, produced from 1990 and onwards. The serial killer narrative is regarded as a transcultural phenomenon, and the central purpose of the project is to explore how and to what effect Scandinavian writers and filmmakers have adapted this ostensibly North American genre into a Scandinavian context. Materials investigated include the Thomas Quick case; films such as Nattevagten (1994), Neon Demon (2016), and The House that Jack Built (2018), television series such as Bron/Broen (2011-2017), Den som dræber (2011, 2018) and Wisting (2019), as well as novels by Jo Nesbø, Stig Larsson, Jussi Adler Olsen and others.
   

• Monstrous Intermediality: Intermediality and the Slasher Film (Morten Feldtfos Thomsen)
  Internal funding (2019-2023)
  
  This project investigates the form and function of different intermedial strategies in the horror subgenre of the slasher film. Its main object of study is the 1970s and 1980s North American slasher, i.e. films such as Black Christmas (1974), Halloween (1978), Friday the Thirteenth (1980), A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) and several others.                     

• Why some literary works die and some survive over time (Anna Forssberg and Anna Linzie)
  Internal funding (2020–2021)

  Over time, some literary works survive and some die. What determines whether a text ends up in (and establishes itself as a natural part of) a national literary canon – or not? What determines whether a novel is selected, read and used in educational contexts in school? Based on previous research on Sigfrid Siwertz (Forssberg), an author who has been completely forgotten by today’s readers, and on how literary history is written and how literature is valued based on notions of genre, experiment and authorship (Linzie), the project looks at whether literature that lasts follows a particular pattern. The hypothesis is that literature that is intimately tied to the times when it was written and that upholds the social phenomena it depicts has less chance of surviving than works that question contemporary phenomena and apply a rhetorical perspective (the position from which the author or narrator speaks) from the periphery towards the centre, an underdog perspective.

• It’s all about class. Ideas of work and trade in Dickens, Zola and Scandinavian novels 1930–1949
  Internal funding 2015–2021

  The aim of the project is to increase the understanding of how different social classes’ self-images and views of other classes are reproduced in literature by studying the notions of work and trade that appear in a selection of novels by Dickens and Zola and in a selection of Scandinavian novels 1930–1949, gathered from working class novels and bourgeois novels from the three countries. As such, the project belongs to the research field of literature and class. Methodologically, the project combines phenomenology and performativity to bridge the gap between the textual analysis and interpretation on the one hand and ideologically critical perspectives on the other.

• Assessment of oral proficiency in English (Liliann Byman Frisén). Doctoral thesis project 2020-2025
  
  The doctoral thesis project looks at the assessment of oral proficiency in English in Swedish compulsory school. A central research issue is how oral proficiency is understood and interpreted by those who assess and grade the national test in English in year 6 and year 9, and how this relates to knowledge and policy on oral proficiency in a second language.
   
• Family language policy in Swedish–English bilingual families (Tim Roberts); PhD project, 2017–2022
  
  This project investigates the interplay between practiced, perceived, and declared family language policies in Swedish–English bilingual families in Sweden and the UK.
   
• From monologues to dialogues (Silvia Kunitz; Jessica Berggren (project manager) Karina Pålsson Gröndahl, Anette Resare Jansson) Funded by the City council of Stockholm. 2018-
  
  The project involves a collaboration with in-service teachers of English and Modern Languages in Swedish schools and it targets the design of oral tasks. The participating teachers are engaged in iterative cycles of task design, task implementation, and task revision. Conversation Analysis is used as an analytical tool to explore students' interactions during the accomplishment of the various versions of the tasks.
   
• Investigating predatory publishing in political science: a corpus-based approach (Ying Wang, Josep Soler, Stockholm University), 2018-
  
  This project aims to contribute to the complex yet under-represented research area of predatory practices in scholarly publication and research communication. Currently, we are using corpus linguistics methods (e.g., keywords, lexical bundles, syntactic complexity) to provide empirical evidence on disciplinary writing that distinguishes research articles published in a predatory journal in the field of political science from those published in a prestigious outlet. In addition, we are also interested in analysing spam emails sent out by predatory publishers to uncover features (linguistic and social) that help make the existence of predatory publishing possible and viable. In the future, the research will be expanded by including more disciplines and an additional layer of analysis, namely sociolinguistic and language ideological analysis.
   
• Listening to the voices of teachers: Multilingualism and inclusive education across borders (Andrea Schalley). 2017–2023.
  The project is part of CSL - Center for Language and Literature Education
  
  This project carries out a transnational, comparative study on pre-primary and primary school teacher’s attitudes, beliefs and knowledge on multilingualism across countries. Since teachers form the crucial link between top-down policies and bottom-up practices, their attitudes, beliefs and knowledge on multilingualism are critical factors to achieving inclusive education. Currently, researchers from 12 countries are involved (Australia, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, the Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Sweden, the United Kingdom). In Sweden, we are collaborating with colleagues from Stockholm, Linnaeus and Dalarna Universities.
   
• Non-apologies: The reception of public apologies in mediated interaction in the era of #MeToo (Erica Sandlund, Peter Wikström). Funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond [P19-0213:1]. 2020-2023.
  
  In this project, we will identify and analyze discursive practices of rejecting public apologies in the wake of the #MeToo movement, in both journalistic mediated interaction and informal social media interaction. Such practices are analyzed in terms of how the discourse participants practice ‘folk linguistics’, negotiating notions of what constitutes a ‘real’ apology. Further, the practices are analyzed as a way of doing ‘everyday’ political participation in the social media context.
  More information is available at kau.se/en/non-apoligies
   
• Polysemy: Concept networks and constructions (Andrea Schalley; Dietmar Zaefferer (project manager), Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munchen) 2020-2022.
  
  Linguistic ambiguity can lead to misunderstanding and may thus give rise to communication problems. How come that polysemy, the most frequent form of ambiguity, seems to be not only near-ubiquitous at least with frequently occurring words, but also most of the time unproblematic or even beneficial? We investigate the multiple readings of polysemous lexical items with respect to the different kinds of concept networks they belong to, their resolution in the context of different constructions, their emergence from metaphor and metonymy, and their possible augmentation by new uses.
   
• Semantic Typology: Social Cognition across Languages (Andrea Schalley)
  Funded by the Australian Research Council, the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research. 2016–2022.
  
  This project investigates how social cognition is coded in different linguistic structures across languages. In order to do so, we create a parallel corpus for 24 languages that focuses on functional categories relevant to the social and psychological facts that place people within an interconnected social context and allows them to interact with one another. More information on the project and the corpus is available in "Scopic Design and Overviews", Language Documentation & Conservation Special Publication No. 12 and at ARC Centre of Excellence for The Dynamics of Language.
   
• Swedish Learner Corpus of English – a corpus compilation project (Henrik Kaatari, University of Gävle, Ying Wang, Tove Larsson, Uppsala University) 2021-

  This project aims to compile a corpus of essays written in English by students at Swedish secondary schools. The corpus will be used by teachers, teacher trainees, and researchers wishing to learn more about learner English writing and to improve teaching methods.

• The use of English as a Lingua Franca (ELF) in digital interaction (Sebastian Malinowski). PhD project; 2016–2022
  
  ELF describes the use of English as a communication tool by speakers of different native languages. The central aim of this dissertation project is to identify and describe language practices in ELF communication with a focus on spoken interactions in an online setting (Skype recordings). This study will examine how second language (L2) English speakers from different first language (L1) backgrounds communicate with each other. The areas that are of interest to this study are conceptual metaphors, communication breakdowns, cultural identities as a resource in ELF and code-switching.
   
• Virtual worlds and semantic modelling (Andrea Schalley, Anton Benz, Leibniz Centre of General Linguistics, Berlin, Torgrim Solstad, Bielefeld University, Oliver Bott, Bielefeld University), 2021-
  
  The project investigates how basic actions are conceptualised and linguistically expressed across languages. We in particular ask which conceptual dimensions distinguish verbal meanings and which ones are irrelevant. In order to investigate this experimentally, we use virtual world animations as stimuli, allowing us to systematically and in a controlled way manipulate different dimensions.

• "We are Black; we’re at home with that”: British Poetry from Black Power to Black Lives Matter (Judith Kiros)
  PhD project funded by Kufo (The Research Group for Cultural Studies) 2020-

  The project aims to examine Black British poetry from the age of Black Power to Black Lives Matter. Through close readings of four major poets – Linton Kwesi Johnson, Fred D’Aguiar, Patience Agbabi and Jackie Kay – and through the theoretical lens of Paul Gilroy’s “Black Atlantic”, it traces a theoretical, political tradition and literary tradition to younger poets Kayo Chingonyi and Jay Bernard.

• From Galadriel to Dobby: An Intertextual Approach to the Fairy Figure in Modern Fantasy Literature (Saga Bokne)
  Internal funding (PhD project) 2019-
  
  This project explores the fairy figure as it is depicted in the modern fantasy genre. Examining a wide variety of fantasy texts, the project aims to map the development of the fairy figure in relation to fairy depictions in folklore and in canonical literature. It also aims to elucidate the function(s) which this figure performs in the fantasy genre of today.

• Places of Rest in Worlds of Ruin: A Study of Havens in Post-Apocalyptic Texts (Andreas Nyström) Internal funding (PhD project) 2012-
  
  The project is a thematic exploration of places of rest—havens—in post-apocalyptic fiction. English novels are the primary material in concern, but other English-language narrative representations like films, TV-series, computer games, and graphic novels are also considered. The study examines the functions of havens in post-apocalyptic fictions from narratological, pastoral, and spatial perspectives.
   
• Science fiction and intercultural encounters (Participants: Maria Holmgren Troy, Andreas Jacobsson, Johan Wijkmark)
  Internal funding 2016-
  
  Syftet med detta forskningsprojekt är att analysera olika former av kulturmöten i science fiction-litteratur, -film och -tv som interkulturella möten. Genom att aktivera ett perspektiv som är interkulturellt bidrar vi till ett gryende forskningsfält som problematiserar ett ensidigt västerländskt tänkande om science fiction. Projektet bidrar med tvärvetenskaplig teori- och begreppsutveckling inom de båda forskningsfälten science fiction-studier och interkulturella studier.

"Companies often begin their innovation process with a type of idea generation that is based on what they can do with an existing product or a service offer - often related to what is technically possible, regardless of the customer needs, says Maria Åkesson, Senior Lecturer in Business Administration at CTF, Service Research Center at Karlstad University

"When working with companies and organizations we, as researchers, often contribute with an increased knowledge of why customer-focused innovation is important and why companies should focus more on what the customer wants, and how to facilitate this."

She also points out that companies have the ability, and are willing, to think about innovation from the customer's perspective.

"There are key people, such as salespeople - but also other employees, with great knowledge of the customer - knowledge that can be used to better understand the customer's needs to develop services adapted to them. But, to get the management, or the organization at large, to listen is not always that easy. This is unfortunate since many ideas come from the customers or from an understanding of the market,” says Maria Åkesson.

How is innovation prioritized by companies today?
“It seems to be especially prioritized during difficult times. In times of high demand, innovation often suffers, the companies are busy supplying the market with what is needed. This is quite natural, but as a researcher I wish for innovation to be constantly present.”

Research and practice drive development forward
For several years, Maria Åkesson has conducted research on innovation and servitization. She is the project leader for ServzChall, which is carried out in collaboration with companies from the manufacturing industry. In the project, which is now in its third and final year, she can see how the companies have developed and have made a lot of progress.

“The progress can often be linked to an employee in the company who is passionate about service logic, someone who understands its potential and how it can be used. I also think that the progress can be linked to our way of working with regular workshops focusing and working on problems and new possibilities together with the companies,” says Maria Åkesson.

“The companies contribute with input to our research, and we contribute with new approaches and methods, often linked to new ways of working in practice. It is usually an eye opener for the companies and something that they can apply directly in their business and operation – hopefully also after our project together is completed.”

She explains that one frequently asked question, when working with companies, is regarding value-based pricing. They want more knowledge on how to be able to charge for services and the value they create for and with the customer.

“There are no simple answers, but we can provide with different methods and share experiences, for example the importance of documenting and demonstrating the value of a product or an offer, and what difference it makes for the customer.”

Research on innovation and service development – what is happening right now?
“There is a lot of talk about digitalization, business models and digital platforms. For example: How are customer experiences affected by digitalization? What possibilities are there to reach out to the customers and meet in a common arena, a digital platform, to co-create value?”

“Another hot area is service eco-system which, in short, means looking at innovation and service development from a larger perspective. To succeed with innovation, you have to see beyond your own organization and create an understanding of which, and how, different actors, systems and areas need to collaborate to achieve a common goal."

"Service eco-system is an exciting area that we are guaranteed to hear more about. It is also one of CTF’s research areas in which I, together with several other colleagues are conducting research,” concludes Maria Åkesson.

Self-service and customisation make your customers want to take part in producing goods and services. They are more appreciative of services they have personally participated in producing.

Cost-conscious managers consider engaging customers to do part of a job in order to save costs. Market-oriented managers consider engaging customers to create increased customer-supplied assets.

Why do we consider our own ideas and proposals as being better than others’? Professor Dan Ariely at Duke University calls the phenomena “The IKEA Effect” and “Not invented here” syndrome.
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