17 December 2021

Linköping University (LiU) will receive SEK 30 million from the Swedish Research Council, for the funding call Research environment grant interdisciplinary research. The grant makes possible an initiative where researchers from very different backgrounds contribute to a better understanding of post-covid-19 syndrome as an urgent health challenge.

Woman in dark room, trying to look outside Photo credit chameleonseye

Previous research into post-covid-19 syndrome has primarily had a clinical and biomedical focus, and has described presence and variation of symptoms. The project at LiU that has been granted funding will also study post-covid from philosophical, socio-political and patient perspectives. Further, the project contributes an epistemological framework for the production of interdisciplinary knowledge about people’s health and disease.

“This is a very large research project involving a collaboration between researchers at Linköping University, the Department of Rehabilitation Medicine and the Department of Radiology at the Linköping University Hospital, as well as post-covid clinics at Region Östergötland. These collaborations are necessary to meet the challenges created in the tracks of the pandemic”, says Professor Kristin Zeiler, who will coordinate the project.Professor Kristin ZeilerProfessor Kristin Zeiler Photo credit David Einar

The work will be based at the Centre for Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Linköping University, where Kristin Zeiler is director.

“At the Centre for Medical Humanities and Bioethics we already have interdisciplinary work on which we can build. The Swedish Research Council wanted to see a focus on interdisciplinary collaboration between researchers and research groups with truly different backgrounds. We certainly meet that wish, and the project is making completely new collaborations possible. This is going to be extremely exciting”, says Kristin Zeiler.

A total of 15 researchers from Linköping University and Region Östergötland will take part in the project. These researchers come from subjects such as philosophy and ethics of medicine, sociology, rehabilitation medicine and neuroscience. The project will include collaboration with colleagues at Sorbonne University in France, Durham University in the UK, and UC San Francisco and Vanderbilt University in the United States.

The grant from the Swedish Research Council will be paid out over a six-year period.

Project name:
Biomedicine, Clinical Knowledge, and the Humanities in Collaboration: A Novel Epistemology for Radically Interdisciplinary Health Research and Policy-Work on Post-Covid-19 Syndrome


Contact

Latest news from LiU

A man in a lab coat holding a tube of blue liquid.

Electrodes created using light

Visible light can be used to create electrodes from conductive plastics completely without hazardous chemicals. This is shown in a new study carried out by researchers at Linköping and Lund universities.

Ryggtavlan på en man.

Greater risk that the political right falls for conspiracy theories

People who lean politically to the right are more likely to fall for conspiracy theories. But regardless of ideology, we tend to accept political claims that align with our own beliefs. This is shown in a doctoral thesis from LiU.

A man kneeling down on a field holding a grass mat.

Artificial turf in the Nordic climate – a question of sustainability

Artificial turf football pitches are better than natural turf from a sustainability perspective – with some reservations. This is demonstrated by researchers at LiUy in a new study using life cycle analyses.