Maria Arnelid

A changing welfare state

What unites my research are questions around how welfare services are organized and change, an interest in the policies, work practices and technologies that contributes to such change, and what this means for those who depend on welfare services. I am an interdisciplinary scholar with a background in fields such as Gender Studies, Social Anthropology and Science and Technology Studies. In addition to my interest in health and social care, something that unites my research is qualitative and ethnographic methods.

Coordinating care efforts for people with dementia

I am currently working as a postdoc in the project Collaboration of health and care services for people with dementia, led by Johannes H. Österholm. In this project, we investigate how healthcare and social care actors collaborate and coordinate efforts to meet the individual's health and social care needs upon discharge from inpatient care. The project takes a particular interest in how participation unfolds in practice and is supported and/or hindered by the actors involved.

Welfare technology for elder care

As a PhD student at the Department of Thematic Studies (Tema Genus) I studied the development and implementation of welfare technology for elder care. My dissertation focuses on how welfare technology becomes connected to concerns about elder care provision and particular ideals of care in sociotechnical imaginaries. In the dissertation I study the development and implementation of welfare technology in two contexts: using qualitative, semi-structured interviews with municipal decision-makers and through an ethnographic study of the development of a conversation partner robot in robotics research. I ask which imaginaries inform the decision-making around welfare technology, how they are materialized, and what it says about the relationship between imaginaries and the organizations and technologies they involve. In addition, I ask how ideals and practices of care and care work are renegotiated through the development and implementation of welfare technology.