In my thesis, I explore how the topic of intimate partner violence is dealt with in professional conversations between case officers at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency (SSIA) and their clients.

Intimate partner violence is a sensitive topic that is complicated to talk about, both in terms of asking questions and in terms of disclosures. At the same time, conversations about violence can be crucial in order to provide help for the ones in need of it. Today, intimate partner violence constitute a serious societal problem that is combated on governmental level. As part of such processes, representatives for governmental agencies and other welfare organizations are increasingly given the task to ask about violence in their contact with citizens. However, at this moment, knowledge and guidence regarding how such questions can be asked, and how the terms for having these conversations look like in actual practice, is to a large extent missing. In order to pick up discosures of violence in a successful way, more empirically grounded knowledge is needed. What is working well in these conversations and what is more challengeing? How do people go about telling about violence? These are the kinds of questions i study in my thesis.

Metodologically, I work with Conversation analysis (CA) and Membership Categorization Analysis (MCA). My data consists of recorded telephone calls to and from the SSIA. The collection of data is carried out together with the project Asking about violence External link. at Uppsala University. During my PhD, I am an affiliated associate in the project.

At Södertörn, I am a part of the research area Studies in the Educational Sciences External link.. I teach sociolinguistics and interactional analysis at undergraduate level.

I am a member of the research group Talk and interaction in social work External link. at the Department of Social Work at Uppsala universitet.

Main supervisor: Lina Nyroos, Södertörn University
Co-supervisor: Marie Flinkfeldt, Uppsala University