To Örebro University

The starting point of this article is an interest in understanding what happens when the concept of evidence-based practice (EBP) travel between countries. Understanding knowledge as something constructed between actors who shape and trade ideas and experiences, the aim is to study how EBP has been received, interpreted and practised in Swedish social work in comparison to some of the other Nordic welfare states. This is done through as coping study literature review of research on evidence-based practice(EBP) in Swedish social work within the Swedish welfare system. The review shows that two research units (CUS and IMS) at the public authority National Board of Health and Welfare have had significant influence on the travelling of EBP to Sweden. Further, the review shows that a guideline-model version of EBP has been given priority inthe diffusion process. The results also show that the interest in EBP among managers has increased over the past few years, and that the irattitude toward the concept is generally positive. At the same time Swedish social workers rarely make use of research in their work, seldom use evidence-based methods, and seems to be unsure of the meaning of the concept.

Denna rapport presenterar en översikt av forskning om evidensbaserad praktik (EBP) i svenskt socialt arbete inom den kommunala socialtjänsten och andra verksamheter inom den svenska socialvården. Syftet är att beskriva forskningsläget om EBP i socialt arbete samt ge förslag till fortsatt forskning på området. I rapporten redovisas forskning om stöd, attityder och förhållningssätt till det evidensbaserade arbetet med fokus på organisation, chefer och första linjens socialarbetare. Resultaten visar att genomförandet av EBP i socialt arbete till stora delar styrts centralt av Socialstyrelsen. Den EBP-version som på detta sätt prioriterats och spridits skulle kunna kallas en guideline-modell. Forskning visar också att svenska socialarbetares anpassning till ett EBP-koncept enligt guideline-modell är relativt svagt. Trots det är socialarbetare liksom sina chefer överlag allmänt positiva till EBP, men det finns också en relativt stark oro för att den version av EBP som sprids av Socialstyrelsen är för rigorös för att passa praktiskt socialt arbete. Mot bakgrund av det fokus som forskningen haft och de kunskapsluckor som finns om socialarbetares förhållande till en reflekterande praktiker-modell avslutas rapporten med att ge ett förslag på framtida möjliga forskningsfrågor utifrån detta perspektiv.

Emotions, and their intersections in the spaces and places of our everyday lives, matter, especially because these emotions very often provide us with reminders of the past, mediate our present and shape the future. This research agenda continues the now consistent conceptual and method-based engagement of emotional geographies, discussing how and why emotions matter, while also providing a forum for multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary debate on theoretically informed research on the emotional intersections between people and place. These objectives are broadly conceived and seek to encourage investigations of feelings, encounter and affect in various spatial and social contexts, environments and landscapes. This introductory chapter charts how we, as authors, have navigated creating and sustaining emotional geographies through writing collaboratively and with close cognisance of our own positions. We identify four key opening themes – emotion(al) politics, emotions and performativity, emotions and movement, and emotion(al) technologies – that we think both showcase the intersections of emotional geographies to everyday life and cognate scholarship, but which also permeate through the following chapters too.

Background: Evidence-based interventions (EBIs) are frequently modified in practice. It is recommended that decisions to modify EBIs should be made deliberately to ensure fidelity-consistency, yet the relationship between fidelity-consistency and deliberateness is not well understood. This study aims to explore modifications in a sample of practitioners delivering evidence-based parenting programs (i.e., interventions to strengthen parent–child relationships, reduce harmful interactions, and improve child health and well-being). The study investigated three research questions: (1) What kind of modifications are made during the delivery of parenting programs? (2) To what degree are the identified modifications consistent with the core functions of each program? and (3) Is deliberateness associated with the fidelity-consistency of the identified modifications?

Methods: In total, 28 group leaders of five widely disseminated parenting programs in Sweden participated in five focus groups, and two participants from each group also participated in individual interviews (n = 10). A content analysis approach was used where the identification of modifications was directed by the Framework for Reporting Adaptations and Modifications-Enhanced (FRAME) and then assessed for fidelity-consistency and four levels of deliberateness (universal, situational, conditional, and unintentional). Chi-square tests were performed to compare consistent and inconsistent modifications, and logistic regression was performed to explore whether deliberateness predicted consistency.

Results: A total of 137 content modifications were identified, covering most of the content modification categories in FRAME. The most common were tailoring/tweaking/refining, adding elements, shortening/condensing, lengthening/extending, and integrating another treatment. Modifications were mostly fidelity-consistent but consistency varied greatly among categories. Furthermore, modifications made unintentionally or situationally were more likely to be fidelity-inconsistent.

Conclusions: These results indicate that explicit consideration of modifications and their impact could be essential for sustaining the fidelity-consistent use of EBIs, even as such interventions are continuously modified.

Background: Implementing evidence-based parenting programs often involves navigating fidelity-adaptation decisions. While research has explored various aspects of this dilemma, little is known about how practitioners’ outcome preferences influence their decisions in real-world scenarios.

Methods: This study employed a discrete choice experiment (DCE) to investigate the relative importance of five outcomes (Relationship Quality, Satisfaction, Workload Strain, Value Conflict, and Reach) in fidelity-adaptation decisions among 209 practitioners delivering evidence-based parenting programs in Sweden. The DCE presented 25 choice sets across five contextual scenarios, analyzed using Bayesian hierarchical logistic regression.

Results: All five outcomes significantly influenced practitioners’ choices, with Relationship Quality emerging as the most impactful (log-odds: 4.56, 95% CI [4.16, 4.91]). Satisfaction and minimizing Value Conflict showed similar importance (log odds: 2.45 and -2.40, respectively), while Workload Strain and Reach had slightly less impact (log odds: -2.10 and 1.96, respectively).

Conclusions: This study offers a novel perspective on the role of outcome preference in navigating fidelity-adaptation decisions. The strong preference for improving parent-child relationships aligns with core parenting program goals, while consideration of other outcomes reflects practitioners’ holistic approach to implementation. These findings can inform the design of interventions and implementation strategies that balance effectiveness with real-world constraints, potentially enhancing parenting programs’ adoption, sustainability, and impact.

Young people use different thinking strategies to deal with conflicts related to climate engagement. The aim of this study was to investigate whether dialectical thinking, i.e. being able to transcend conflicting thoughts, and black-and-white thinking, i.e. either-or-thinking, are associated with climate engagement, and whether these possible connections remain significant when controlling for well-known predictors of climate engagement (gender, parental descriptive norms, attitudes, perceived knowledge, outcome expectancy and trust in science). Additionally, we investigate if these thinking strategies moderate the relationships between perceived knowledge and climate engagement as well as attitudes and climate engagement. Using survey data from two cohorts of late adolescents, Study 1 focuses on climate-friendly food choices (N = 470) and Study 2 on climate-friendly behavior in general (N = 559). Dialectical thinking was positively, and black-and-white thinking negatively, associated with climate engagement, in most cases also when including control variables. Higher levels of dialectical thinking strengthened the relationship between knowledge and engagement, implying that it might narrow the gap between knowledge and engagement among adolescents. We conclude that considering these thinking strategies in climate education could be important for climate engagement.

This article investigates linguistic and multimodal aspects of epistemic inclusion in the Seychelles Primary 4 national examinations in English and Science, the first high-stakes assessments undertaken after learners transition to English as the medium of instruction and assessment. Drawing on examination papers, marking schemes, and examination reports from 2022–2024, the study explores how language complexity, question types, and cultural and visual references influence learner performance and access to knowledge demonstration.

The analysis combines quantitative and qualitative approaches. Quantitative findings reveal a consistent pattern across both subjects: learners perform substantially better on closed-response items such as multiple-choice, true/false, and fill-in-the-blank questions than on free-text responses requiring written explanations, reasoning, or extended writing. Questions demanding greater linguistic production consistently show lower success rates, despite often carrying a disproportionately large share of total marks. Qualitative analyses of outlier items demonstrate that many poorly performing questions contain dense academic vocabulary, abstract or ambiguous syntax, unclear instructions, and culturally unfamiliar references. By contrast, items supported by illustrations, familiar local contexts, or simplified language tend to produce higher success rates.

The study also identifies tensions between inclusive multilingual policy aspirations and the predominantly English-only orientation of assessment practices. Analysis of marking schemes and examination reports suggests a strong structural approach to language, emphasizing grammatical accuracy, spelling, punctuation, and rigid formats, while offering limited recognition of multilingual meaning-making practices or the challenges faced by second-language learners.

Overall, the findings suggest that examination performance is shaped as much by learners’ English proficiency and familiarity with culturally embedded references as by their subject knowledge. The article argues that current assessment practices risk functioning as forms of linguistic gatekeeping and calls for more inclusive examination design through simplified language, contextual scaffolding, communicative marking approaches, and multilingual support measures to enhance epistemic equity in multilingual education systems.

We derive the exact density function of the product of an inverse Wishart random matrix and an independent normal random vector. The density is expressed as a one-dimensional integral that can be evaluated quickly and accurately by standard quadrature methods. We further obtain integral representations for the density of linear combinations of the elements of this product; in particular, the joint density of any p linear combinations can be recovered from an integral of dimension at most min(p + 1, m − p + 1, 6), where m is the dimension of the random vector. All results are established in the general setting in which the scale matrix of the Wishart distribution and the covariance matrix of the normal vector are arbitrary positive definite matrices, and simplified formulas involving integrals of dimension at most three are provided for the important special case in which the two covariance matrices are proportional.

L’articolo analizza la proposta europea nota come “Chat Control” con specifico riferimento alla prevenzione e al rilevamento dell’adescamento di minori nelle comunicazioni digitali. Muovendo dall’esame del quadro normativo europeo e italiano, il contributo evidenzia un significativo disallineamento tra la definizione di «adescamento» accolta dalla Convenzione di Lanzarote e dalla direttiva 2011/93/UE, da un lato, e quella più ampia adottata dal legislatore italiano, dall’altro. Tale divergenza incide direttamente sulla compatibilità giuridica e sull’efficacia dei sistemi automatizzati di rilevazione previsti dalla proposta di regolamento. L’analisi mette in luce i limiti strutturali delle tecnologie di monitoraggio applicate alle comunicazioni testuali, il rischio di sovra- e sotto-inclusione delle condotte penalmente rilevanti e le conseguenti implicazioni per i diritti fondamentali, in particolare per la privacy e la certezza del diritto, auspicando un maggior coordinamento tra disciplina penale, soluzioni tecnologiche e obiettivi di armonizzazione europea.

The randomized phase II SAKK 35/14 trial, conducted by the Swiss Group for Clinical Cancer Research (SAKK) and the Nordic Lymphoma Group (NLG), compared efficacy and safety of rituximab (375 mg/m2 intravenously for 4 weeks followed by maintenance every 2 months for 24 months) plus placebo (arm A) versus the same schedule of rituximab plus ibrutinib (560 mg daily for 24 months, arm B) in patients with advanced follicular lymphoma in need of systemic therapy. The primary end-point, complete remission (CR) rate at 24 months, was 36% in arm A and 40% in arm B, with no statistically significant difference. Three-year progression-free survival (PFS) was 36% in arm A and 45% in arm B, with a hazard ratio of 0.64 (p = 0.057). Three-year overall survival was about 96% in both arms. A higher percentage of patients in arm B experienced grade ≥3 adverse events, but they were manageable. No toxic deaths were observed. Although the primary end-point (CR rate at 24 months) was not met, a trend towards improved PFS with ibrutinib plus rituximab observed at the prespecified significance level of 0.1 may indicate a potential clinical benefit.

Safe and efficient robot operation in human-shared environments requires understanding and anticipating how people move. This thesis advances the representation, learning, and exploitation of spatio-temporal Maps of Dynamics (MoDs), which are structured models that encode statistical motion patterns observed in an environment, for long-horizon human motion prediction and human-aware robot navigation.

On the representation side, this thesis addresses key limitations of existing MoDs along four complementary dimensions: adaptivity, continuity, robustness, and context-awareness. First, for adaptivity, an online learning method based on stochastic Expectation Maximization enables MoDs to adapt incrementally to changing motion patterns without costly offline reconstruction, maintaining accuracy at substantially lower computational cost and enablin glong-term deployment on mobile robots without storing historical data. Second, for continuity, a neural implicit representation eliminates spatial discretization by learning a continuous function that maps arbitrary spatio-temporal coordinates to multi-modal velocity distributions, achieving higher representation accuracy than grid-based approaches while training efficiently. Third, for robustness, a method inspired by data-driven airflow modeling extracts the structured laminar component from observed motion, mitigating the impact of anomalous data and producing more robust motion pattern representations. Fourth, for context-awareness, conditioning MoDs on time of day and agent class captures heterogeneous motion behaviours that single aggregated maps cannot represent, yielding more informative motion priors that directly improve downstream prediction accuracy.

On the exploitation side, MoDs are shown to serve as powerful environmentlevel priors for downstream tasks. This thesis exploits MoDs first f or longhorizon human motion prediction, where a sampling-based framework queries MoDs at each prediction step to generate multi-modal, spatially grounded trajectories that respect the environment topology over horizons of up to 60 seconds. The predicted trajectories implicitly follow corridors, turn at junctions, and reach semantically meaningful goal regions, improving interpretability. Across multiple datasets and prediction horizons, MoD-based methods outperform learning-based and diffusion-based baselines at long horizons, with the advantage being most pronounced under data scarcity and class imbalance. This framework is further extended with laminar enhancement, temporal conditioning, and agent-class conditioning, along with a trajectory ranking mechanism based on cumulative MoD likelihood that provides a principled way to select the most probable prediction from the multi-modal output, improving practical utility for real-world deployment.

This thesis also exploits MoDs for human-aware robot navigation. A hierarchical framework that treats crowd motion as guidance rather than solely as an obstacle enables proactive flow alignment in dense crowds, addressing the freezing robot problem and successfully transferring from simulation to real-world deployment in a public museum without retraining. Finally, MoD priors are integrated into multi-agent path finding to reduce conflicts between robots and human flows in shared environments, extending the utility of structured motion representations from single-robot planning to multi-robot coordination.

Together, these contributions demonstrate that learned structured representations of human dynamics provide a unifying foundation for prediction and navigation, extending the robot’s contextual awareness beyond its immediate sensing range toward more predictive, socially aware, and robust autonomous operation in human-shared spaces.

This study contributes to knowledge about school-age educare as a literacy practice by investigating conditions for reading and writing among students aged 6-7. Data were collected through observations of teachers’ and students’ literacy-related actions, as well as individual interviews with teachers at two school age educare settings. The findings show that teachers led reading aloud and individual reading activities, in which students either read silently or “talk-read” with a peer. Reading aloud served several functions, including highlighting thematic work, focusing on a specific reading comprehension strategy, and creating order during snack time. The school-age educare teachers also initiated literacy skills training through isolated phonics exercises offered as an optional activity during “free play.” This practice closely resembled phonics teaching in school. By contrast, when students engaged with letter-sound associations duringoutdoor “free play,” the aim was not to practice phonics; instead, the language play served the purpose of the play itself. Thus, different practices occurred in parallel in the school-age educare settings: a more school based practice guided by school-age educare teachers, alongside more playful student-initiated practices inwhich reading, writing, and language play were explored on students’ own terms.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) poses a significant global health threat, impacting clinical treatments, agriculture, and public health. Although mass spectrometry techniques like MALDI-TOF provide opportunity for rapid AMR detection, current state-of-the-art models, such as MSDeepAMR, are limited to single-label classification, requiring separate models for each bacterium-antibiotic combination. These approaches struggle with challenges such as class imbalance, incomplete labels, and poor generalization across bacterial strains and antibiotics. This study addresses these limitations by introducing a novel multi-label, multi-bacteria classification framework (MLMBC) that simultaneously predicts AMR across multiple bacterial species and antibiotics using MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry data and Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs), hereby establishing a solid foundation for the development of robust and rapid diagnostic tools to address the growing threat of multidrug-resistant bacteria. Utilizing CNNs in combination with transfer learning and semi-supervised classification techniques, such as self-training, pseudo-labeling and kNN label propagation, our approach improves accuracy and overcomes dataset limitations. Results demonstrate that the proposed approach with pseudo-labeling consistently outperforms single- and multi-label baselines; for example, it achieves AUROC >= 0.94 for E. coli, K.pneumoniae and S.aureus - Ceftriaxone pairs. Statistical tests support the effectiveness of the proposed approach, demonstrating that simultaneous multi label, multi-bacteria modeling constitutes a reliable and scalable strategy for antibiotic resistance prediction in clinically relevant settings.

Adversarial uses of chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear, and explosive (CBRNE) materials present distinct challenges for the emergency response community (ERC). This literature review examines 110 studies on ERC resilience to deliberate CBRNE threats. Using a systematic review approach, we analyse literature covering six ERC components: fire services, civil protection services, emergency medical services, law enforcement, military, and non-affiliated volunteers-each with distinct roles and operational logics that complicate coordination. Four core challenges are identified: the capability and willingness of first responders is often undermined by a lack of training and resources; existing emergency plans frequently underestimate CBRNE-specific demands; institutional fragmentation hinders joint action; and communication remains a persistent weakness. While much of the literature emphasizes perceived preparedness and relies on simulations, it often neglects critical ERC actors, especially police, military, and volunteers. Despite the identified weaknesses, the review consolidates recommendations for practice to strengthen resilience, understood as the capacity to prepare for, adapt to, respond to, and recover from adverse events. These findings offer insights to guide future research and inform improved policy and practice in ERC resilience to CBRNE incidents.

Deep reinforcement learning has demonstrated the potential to learn complex decision-making policies directly from interaction. Despite substantial progress in recent years, deep reinforcement learning methods still face major limitations that hinder their applicability in real-world and industrial settings. First, deep reinforcement learning agents typically learn each task from scratch without effectively leveraging prior knowledge, resulting in high data and computational requirements. Second, designing reward functions that simultaneously induce the desired behavior while facilitating efficient learning remains notoriously difficult and often leads to unintended behavior. Third, the use of deep neural networks introduces a lack of interpretability, making it difficult to understand and verify learned policies.

This thesis investigates how to address these limitations. In particular, we study two research questions. First, how can prior knowledge, for example in the form of demonstrations, high-level plans, or task-space constraints, be incorporated into deep reinforcement learning algorithms to improve learning efficiency? Second, how can modular architectures and inductive biases improve interpretability and alignment with human-imposed constraints or preferences?

To answer these questions, this thesis presents several contributions in the form of novel deep reinforcement learning algorithms. First, we show how t osolve multi-objective reinforcement learning problems that impose lexicographic priorities between tasks. This enables knowledge transfer between tasks while enforcing adherence to human-specified priorities. Second, we investigate how human-designed high-level plans in the form of behavior trees can guide reinforcement learning agents to efficiently solve complex tasks, thereby facilitating knowledge transfer from human to agent. Third, we show how hierarchical reinforcement learning architectures can improve interpretability by providing contextual explanations of agent behavior. Next, we investigate normalizing flow policies as a principled framework for incorporating prior knowledge, enforcing constraints, and improving interpretability. Finally, we contrast the proposed modular approaches with the emerging end-to-end transformer-based reinforcement learning paradigm and propose an in-context learning bandit framework.

While the proposed methods differ in their mechanisms for incorporating prior knowledge and improving interpretability and alignment, they share a common focus on modular architectures and inductive biases. The results of this thesis suggest that such architectures are a promising direction for improving the efficiency, interpretability, and controllability of deep reinforcement learning systems.

Across Europe, states have committed to preventing and combating child sexual exploitation (CSE), with Child Protection and Welfare Services (CPWS) playing a central role. Drawing on intersectional risk theory, this scoping review critically examines how the risk of CSE is constructed and responded to within European CPWS. Constructions of risk was identified through analysis of how studies described vulnerability, agency, exploitation, and professional responses to CSE within CPWS. A thematic synthesis of 23 studies reveals that risk constructions foregrounded young people’s choices and agency, alongside stereotypical and normative assumptions, while structural contexts were backgrounded and exploiters largely rendered invisible. These constructions were reflected in CPWS responses focused on education and awareness-raising for young people and caregivers, alongside increased control, surveillance, and care to reduce risk. However, systemic and organizational barriers were also identified, together with a persistent lack of action towards exploiters. In practice, this produces hierarchies of vulnerability among young people, while CPWS mobilize extensive institutional responses to regulate young people’s behavior, whereas exploiters remain comparatively unregulated, unidentified, or unpunished. There is a need for CPWS to move beyond individualized risk approaches by incorporating structural vulnerability, contextual safeguarding, and greater attention to exploiters and power relations.

This paper derives the density function of the product of a Wishart matrix and a normal vector that are independently distributed. Unlike existing results, we allow the covariance matrix of the Wishart distribution and that of the normal vector to differ, and we do not assume them to be proportional. In this general setting, the density is shown to admit a two-dimensional integral representation. We further obtain the density of linear combinations of the product. For a single linear combination, it is again expressed as a two-dimensional integral whose integrand involves the modified Bessel function of the second kind, and the special case of identity covariance matrices is treated explicitly. All resulting expressions are straightforward to evaluate numerically, and the product defines a new family of matrix-variate mixtures of multivariate normal distributions.

Canonical forms provide a fundamental framework for studying matrices and matrix pencils through invariants under various equivalence transformations. These forms reveal structural information about the underlying objects, such as eigenvalues, their multiplicities, and minimal indices. This information plays an important role in differential-algebraic equations, control theory, generalized eigenvalue problems, and related areas. However, in practical applications, canonical invariants are often sensitive to perturbations arising from measurement errors and numerical computations. Closely related to perturbation theory is the notion of the distance to singularity. This distance quantifies how far a matrix pencil is from becoming singular. This thesis investigates canonical forms for pairs of matrices associated with linear time-invariant dissipative Hamiltonian systems under suitable equivalence transformations. Furthermore, it studies minimal changes in the eigenstructure of skew-symmetric matrix pencils under small perturbations by developing theories related to orbits and bundles of skew-symmetric matrix pencils under congruence. Finally, it presents an algorithm for computing a nearby singular matrix pencil from a given regular matrix pencil, where the distance between the two is measured in the Frobenius norm. The method builds on recent advances in the theory of matrix pencil factorizations. The result is then extended to matrix polynomials.

Introduction: Competitive freediving involves repeated voluntary breath-holding, during which hypoxic events such as loss of motor control (LMC) or blackout (BO) may occur. Although nutrition may influence metabolic responses tohypoxia, evidence in competitive freedivers remains limited. This study aimedto investigate the relationship between dietary habits and self-reported hypoxicevents in Spanish competitive freedivers.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in 71 competitive freedivers(19 women: 39.4 ± 9.3 years; 52 men: 41.9 ± 8.6 years). Participants completeda questionnaire on training characteristics and hypoxic events. Events were classified as LMC or BO, and participants were categorized according to the mostsevere event experienced. Dietary habits were assessed using a validated foodfrequency questionnaire (PREDIMED). Associations were examined using chisquare or Fisher’s exact tests, and significant variables were included in a binomiallogistic regression adjusted for age, sex, and years of practice.

Results: Overall, participants showed moderate consumption across dietarygroups, with higher intake of fruits, vegetables, and protein-rich foods; and lowintake of ultra-processed foods and alcohol. Male divers consumed moderateamounts of protein-rich foods, whereas female counterparts reported lowerintake [χ2(2) = 8.53, p = 0.014; Fisher’s exact test, p = 0.010]. Overall, 21 freedivers(29.6%) reported at least one hypoxic event. The occurrence of hypoxic eventswere associated with years of practice (p = 0.003) and consumption of stimulant beverages (p = 0.013). Beginners experienced fewer events than expected,whereas divers with >4 to 10 years of practice were overrepresented. In theadjusted model, years of practice remained significantly associated with hypoxicevents [OR = 3.06, 95% CI (1.43, 6.53), p = 0.004]. Moderate stimulant beverageconsumption emerged as a potential associated factor [OR = 12.54, 95% CI (1.27,123.9), p = 0.031].

Conclusion: Hypoxic events in competitive freedivers were primarily associatedwith years of practice, suggesting that cumulative exposure may be a relevant riskfactor. Overall dietary habits showed no clear relationship with hypoxic events,although stimulant beverage consumption may warrant further investigation

In this inaugural lecture, I explore the relationship between educational policy governance and the space for professional discretion in the Swedish education system. As a point of departure, the lecture is situated in relation to earlier professorial inaugural lectures in Sweden, a tradition dating back to 1910. Drawing on completed and ongoing research, I demonstrate how changing societal expectations and policy frameworks have reshaped the conditions for teachers’ professional work over time. These dynamics are illustrated through examples such as the introduction and evolving meaning of the concept of quality, local initiatives to counteract school segregation, the increasing juridification of education, and finally three governance logics that conceptualize changes in how educational governance frame professional discretion. The lecture concludes with forward-looking reflections, emphasizing the importance of empirically grounded theorizing and further theoretical development that reconnects the changing educational landscape with fundamental questions about education and its relationship to society.

This article examines how the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), incorporated into Swedish law in 2020, is recontextualised in five socioeconomically and ethnically diverse school settings. Drawing on Bernstein's concepts of recontextualization, classification and voice, the study analyses interviews with teachers, principals and superintendents to explore how the CRC shapes pedagogical relations in terms of boundaries and power relations between children, school staff and parents. The results indicate that the CRC's weak classification enables markedly different local interpretations. These, in turn, produce distinct configurations of voice: from individualised child- and parent-driven claims in affluent majority contexts to juridical boundary-setting or collective empowerment approaches in disadvantaged ethnic minority settings. Across cases, the socioeconomic and ethnic contexts strongly condition how boundaries are drawn and whose voice is strengthened or constrained - illustrating the importance of understanding the CRC as a context-sensitive educational object.

The role of pets in supporting children's mental health and well-being has attracted growing attention. Although pets are oftendescribed as emotionally significant companions—offering comfort, security and stability—the effects of pet ownership arenot universally positive or consistent. This scoping review maps existing research on the significance of pets for children'swell-being, particularly those experiencing mental health challenges. Drawing on 20 studies—quantitative, qualitative andmixed-methods—published across diverse cultural contexts, the review identifies three central themes: emotional support andfriendship; responsibility, routine and family; and psychosocial well-being. Findings suggest that the emotional quality of thechild-pet relationship, rather than pet ownership alone, is key to potential benefits such as reduced stress and enhanced resil-ience. The review underscores the importance of context-sensitive understandings of well-being. Pets may be valuable allies inchildren's mental health, but their role should be understood as part of broader social contexts. Contextual factors including age,gender, species of pet and socio-economic environment may influence the outcomes. However, strong reliance on pets can alsoreflect or reinforce social isolation. Limitations include a small evidence base focused largely on high-income countries and alack of studies centring children's own perspectives. Further research is needed to explore how children across varied settingsexperience relationships with pets, and how these connections might inform support strategies in social work and mental healthcare

This article examines how fiction produced by and for transnational, regional and public service platforms respectively open up possibilities for imaginaries of solidarity. Using feminist and narrative theory, we explore how information guides sympathy for the characters, and what the characters and the plot reveal about the embedded gaze. The results highlight the significance of racial and geographic segregation across all three series. Thin Blue Line offers a structural critique of racism while promoting inclusion and solidarity based on middle-class tolerance. In contrast, the more commercially oriented Top Dog and Snabba Cash present a war of all against all to rule society, building on suspense to create sympathy for the characters. These two series imply a “peeping” middle-class gaze into the dangerous world of criminality, thus activating racialized boundaries for who is included in the community of solidarity. Based on the reading of the three series, the article finds that local contexts are important for opening imaginaries of solidarity.

I artikeln studerar vi om arbetslöshet är kopplat till en ökad sannolikhet att flytta till en ny arbetsmarknad och om sambandet skiljer sig mellan olika hushållskonstellationer. Vårt urval inkluderar individer mellan 20–64 år som tidigare varit etablerade på arbetsmarknaden. Vi jämför sannolikheten att flytta mellan nyblivna arbetslösa och fortsatt förvärvsarbetande individer. För individe rutan hemmavarande barn är arbetslöshet associerat med en högre sannolikhet att flytta. Men för individer med hemmavarande barn finns ingen sådan association, vilket tolkas som att barnens förankring på hemorten väger tyngre än möjligheten att flytta till ett jobb.

While there is an increasing number of B2B studies about sustainability, few centre on the issue of biodiversity loss and the business network processes needed to address this. In this paper, we focus on the Swedish forestry sector to investigate the role of alternative accounts made by actors not typically considered as part of the business network (e.g. NGOs, individual activists, ecotourism organisations or investigative journalists), in governing business relationships towards managing biodiversity loss. Through a combination of the sustainability accounting literature and the Industrial Network Approach (INA), we provide a new lens for understanding how network change is pre-mobilised in issue-based nets. Specifically, we introduce the concept of network nudging. We further draw on governmentality to show how the alternative accounts use ethical and emotive discourses to challenge dominant business logics. The paper emphasises the importance of inclusive, dialogical engagement with marginalised voices to strengthen relational governance. We conclude by arguing how current understandings of how sustainability is managed within issue-based nets is enhanced by including the pre-mobilising efforts of alternative accounts.

Maladaptive anger inhibition can be defined as the excessive suppression of angry expressions while remaining intensely angry from within. A growing body of research suggests that maladaptive anger inhibition is associated with various negative outcomes including physical health risks and psychopathology. This thesis aimed to advance our understanding of maladaptive anger inhibition in adults and develop and evaluate novel treatments for this problem. To this end, four studies were conducted.

Study I explored for the presence of anger subgroups in an anger-treatment-seeking sample and identified four groups. Of primary relevance was an “anger-in” profile characterized by low outward anger expression combined with elevated internal anger, consistent with maladaptive anger inhibition. Study II used network analysis to examine associations among anger components and regulation strategies in the same sample, identifying anger rumination as a central process potentially involved in maintaining maladaptive anger inhibition. Study III experimentally investigated the effects of state anger suppression in combination with subsequent regulation strategies, showing that suppression followed by rumination increased anger, whereas suppression followed by reappraisal or continued suppression was associated with reduced anger and improved physiological regulation. Study IV evaluated an emotion regulation-focused treatment for maladaptive anger inhibition, demonstrating feasibility, acceptability, and promising preliminary effects.

Together, findings suggest that maladaptive anger inhibition represents a clinically relevant problem that may be responsive to targeted emotion regulation-focused treatment.

From assessment to intervention: A study on the realisation of special support in compulsory school. Using the theory of practice architectures (Kemmis 2022), this study explores the conditions for realising special support for students in eight compulsory schools in two municipalities in central Sweden. The study is based on a method of collegial learning dialogues and open-ended survey questions, and includes a total of 47 participants from the selected schools. In the study, two areas of instability in the practice landscape could be identified. One instability concerns different ways of understanding and explaining school difficulties in terms of compensatory and relational perspectives. The other concerns the imprint on the practice architecture entailed by a governance ideology rooted in New Public Management. Arrangements in three areas were identified as particularly important for the realisation of special support, namely organisation and structure, collaboration, and consensus. The findings indicate that the realisation of special support, like other (special education) policies, involves extensive and multifaceted processes of change within school practices.

The introductory chapter to the edited volume Arguing with Multiple Semiotic Modes traces the multimodal expansion of the field of argumentation studies from initial skepticism to growing recognition. The authors advocate for integrating multimodal insights into argumentation theory (and vice versa), while addressing the challenges that this synergy raises. They also call for closer dialogue between argumentation studies and rhetoric studies of visual and multimodal communication, acknowledging the vital role of context and genre. After an overview of the contents of the various chapters structured in three parts, the authors conclude by mapping out future directions for research in multimodal argumentation.

Rapporten sammanfattar erfarenheter och insikter om den ideella delningsekonomins förutsättningar utifrån en pilotstudie av fem icke-vinstdrivande delningsinitiativ i Örebro. Rapporten syftar till att bidra till en diskussion kring möjligheterna att etablera, upprätthålla och skala upp ideell delning i Örebro liksom i andra liknande lokala miljöer. Studien belyser utmaningarna med att säkerställa den materiella infrastruktur och de kompetenser som behövs för att driva ideell delning. Studien belyser vidare den centrala roll som samhällsrelationer spelar för att möjliggöra delningspraktiker, inklusive betydelsen av sociala mötesplatser samt initiativens beroende av samarbete med kommun, givare och andra aktörer. Sammantaget visar resultaten att det finns en underutnyttjad potential i lokalsamhället för att stärka och växla upp delningsmodeller.

Introduction: A common issue in internet interventions for mental health conditions is that many patients do not respond to treatment. This has led to a line of research that focuses on finding predictive and moderating factors of treatment outcomes with the goal to improve our understanding of these heterogeneous treatment effects. However, this literature often finds inconsistent results between studies making the findings difficult to implement in clinical practice. Drawing on methods from the from the causal inference literature could improve consistency and impact.

Methods and results: Using causal directed acyclic graphs (DAGs), we show that results from common statistical analyses used in this line of research are sensitive to the underlying causal structure of the data, under some realistic conditions. We use collider bias as an illustrative example. Results from simulation will be presented that show how inconsistent results can appear depending on how covariates are chosen.

Conclusions: Research on predictors and moderators of outcomes in internet interventions would benefit from applying methods from causal inference. Recommendations for future research are to clarify the intended aim of the analyses, precisely define what is to be estimated (the estimand), and justify the chosen statistical analyses using causal reasoning. 

This is a study of dialect use, place-making, and metalinguistic practices in a vocational upper secondary school in the province of Värmland, located in the west-central part of Sweden. The study draws on linguistic-ethnographic fieldwork in four classes at three vocational programs: the Health and Social Care Program, the Electrical and Energy Program, and the Industrial Technology Program. The fieldwork spanned four semesters, including participant observation, audio recordings of eight focus students, and four focus group discussions. Drawing on sociolinguistic and social-semiotic perspectives, this study explores whether and how upper secondary students, aged 16–19, use dialect across different locations in the school, and how these locations are linguistically, socially, and semiotically constituted as meaningful places. The study also examines how students perceive and talk about language and place.

The study shows that students use dialect extensively across all recorded locations, and draw on a broad range of features, including both widely shared and traditionally more local variants. A thematic content analysis of discussions in four focus groups shows that the participating students display a broad range of metalinguistic perceptions and that they use language to signal belonging, create distinctions, and position themselves and others. The study also shows how students constitute different parts of the school as socially meaningful places, where various parts of the school are assigned distinct meanings and associated with particular activities, actors, histories, and qualities. Such meaningful places are then brought into action as practiced places through the interplay of spatial organization, social practice, and language use. The dissertation contributes to research on dialect use and place-making among adolescents in vocational and institutional settings, and to the understanding of how language use and spatial meaning-making are intertwined in everyday social practice.

This paper explores how Jewish youth in Sweden interpret antisemitic discourse encountered in their everyday lives. Drawing on traditions of social semiotics, discourse ethnography, and child and youth studies, the study design enables an emic perspective and highlights how participants draw on their knowledge of multimodal design and production when making sense of the semiotic manifestations they encounter. The data consist of the participating youths’ own documentation of the semiotic manifestations they encounter, as well as focus group discussions in which this documentation is discussed by the youth. The paper presents a novel discourse-design approach to antisemitism that conceptualizes antisemitic manifestations as integrated wholes in which meaning and form, content, and expression are fused. Results show that the participating youth interpret the material properties of antisemitic discourse and their effects with respect to semiotic investment, as well as the affordances of different production and distribution media. By centering interpretation and treating antisemitism as a lived and contextualized semiotic phenomenon, the paper demonstrates the importance of exploring antisemitic and racist discourse from the perspective of the targeted minority.

Cross-sectoral governance has become a prominent feature of contemporary public sector reform. Across policy areas such as sustainability, integration, unemployment, and crime prevention, public organizations are increasingly expected to assemble governmental and non-governmental actors into collective responses to societal challenges. In these arrangements, dispersed actors with fragmented mandates, uneven capacities, and no single center of authority are nonetheless expected to act collectively, assume responsibility, and respond to an expanding range of societal problems.

Drawing on world society theory and an interpretive synthesis of four studies of Swedish cross-sectoral governance networks, this thesis develops the concept of cross-sectoral actorhood. Cross-sectoral actorhood denotes the institutional process through which cross-sectoral governance arrangements come to be attributed and to sustain the qualities of a purposeful, capable, and morally responsible actor. Cross-sectoral actorhood is not an inherent property of such governance arrangements, but an ongoing institutional accomplishment, expressed and sustained through ambiguous institutional scripts, ceremonial infrastructures, and distributed enactments that render them recognizable as legitimate actors within a rationalized cultural order.

The central contribution of the thesis is to reframe cross-sectoral governance not as a neutral mode of problem-solving, but as a cultural stage: a site in which what counts as a pressing societal challenge and who counts as a responsible actor are continuously shaped. This theoretical move opens a critical space for examining not only how cross-sectoral actorhood is institutionally accomplished, but also its normative and political consequences. It shows how responsibility can be made visible and attributable while remaining distributed and unsettled, and foregrounds the political ordering processes through which particular configurations of problems and actors become actionable and legitimate, selectively privileging certain interpretations against a background of apparent consensus.

This study uses multimodal critical discourse analysis to explore the growing market of mental health applications (MHapps), particularly those using sound and music to promote wellbeing. Focusing on NuCalm, Endel and BrainTap, it examines the design and functionalities of their interfaces, revealing the underlying assumptions, values and ideologies embedded in their structures. It finds that these apps are structured around a script of self-management and self-improvement, deeply embedded in an entrepreneurial discourse of self-optimisation. What initially appears as a focus on wellbeing, in fact, subtly pushes users to maximise productivity and competitiveness. The study also reveals paradoxes in presenting both technology and users as the problem and solution to mental health challenges. Overall, it provides new insights into how MHapps shape contemporary understandings of wellbeing, reinforcing neoliberal ideologies of self-care as individual responsibility and raising broader questions about whether these technologies help users or simply redefine personal struggles as failures.

One of the core principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child is that children have the right to freely express their views on all matters affecting them. Thus, the paediatric healthcare sector has a responsibility to promote children’s participation at both the individual and collective level. An important part of high-quality paediatric care is giving children the opportunity to share views on their experiences.

This thesis explores how children’s right to share their views on their healthcare experiences can be facilitated and integrated into Swedish paediatric care. It contains four studies focusing on (I) describing how Swedish paediatric departments encourage children’s voices regarding their healthcare experiences and how children’s perspectives are taken into account in quality-improvement work; (II) translating, adapting and validating the six versions of the Children and Young People –Patient-reported Experience Measure (CYP-PREM) for use in a Swedish healthcare context; (III) piloting the Swedish versions of the CYP-PREM (Swe-CYP-PREM) questionnaire in paediatric care; and(IV) exploring first-line managers’ and quality-improvement workers’ perspectives of using PREMs in paediatric units. The findings indicate that integrating children’s right to express their views regarding their healthcare experiences into clinical practice requires a systematic, flexible and context-sensitive approach grounded in organisational commitment to listening to children’s voices. Swe-CYP-PREM appears to be a valuable tool for facilitating this process, although challenges remain in achieving sustainable and systematic integration of children’s perspectives into paediatric care.

The new Social Services Act increases the demand for preventive measures, which are expected to takeplace in collaboration with other actors. One actor that has received attention in the media is publiclibraries, where, among other things, the introduction of library social workers is a concrete example ofefforts to address social vulnerability. Since their establishment, public libraries have had the task ofserving as universally preventive spaces, aiming to promote social inclusion by providing equal accessto literature, information, and culture. However, there is a lack of knowledge about the role of librariesin offering targeted interventions for socially vulnerable groups. This article aims to map how publiclibraries work to address social vulnerability. The empirical analysis is guided by the following researchquestions: At what level and for which target groups are measures implemented? What characterises thelibraries that carry out such measures? With which actors do libraries collaborate in connection withtargeted interventions? The project is based on a survey answered by 566 public libraries in 259 Swedishmunicipalities. The results show that almost 30 percent of libraries carry out targeted measures to add-ress social vulnerability, and that the majority of these initiatives are conducted in collaboration withother actors. A distinctive feature of the libraries that implement such targeted efforts is a higher pre-valence of visitors with extensive and complex problems. These findings suggest that public librariescould be further developed as venues for preventive social work. However, such a development mayrisk undermining the general trust and legitimacy that libraries currently enjoy. Therefore, any such de-velopment must take place within the library profession itself, where the results of this and similar stu-dies can serve as a foundation for further knowledge and discussion

By reviewing how social science researchers have utilised the triad of sport, gender, and violence, this article identifies variations, changes, and continuities in how these elements have been understood since the 1980s. Based on searches in two databases, the ten most-cited articles from each decade were analysed. The review shows that critical perspectives on men and masculinity were foregrounded in the 1980s, while research connecting sports participation and violence has expanded since the late 1990s. The findings reveal a spectrum of approaches that either challenge or reproduce static understandings of gender and violence. The review demonstrates that the triad, developed as a structural feminist critique and later expanded into research on causal and intervention-oriented models, widens the field’s analytical and political horizons and raises questions about where responsibility for violence in and around sport lies. The concluding discussion highlights the importance of normative guidance where violence occupies a grey area.

There are large variations in how individual patients respond to allergen immunotherapy (AIT) against grass and/or birch allergy. There are currently no reliable biomarkers to predict which patients are likely to benefit from the treatment. The purpose of this study was to examine the potential of cytokine and soluble immunologic checkpoint molecule (ICM) levels as biomarkers for AIT success. Blood samples collected before starting AIT were analyzed for concentration of 92 different cytokines and 14 different ICMs. Traditional univariable statistical analysis was performed to evaluate differences between responders and non-responders. Furthermore, both unsupervised and supervised machine learning algorithms were used for multivariable analysis of differences between the responders and non-responders and to try to identify clusters within the subjects which could potentially be linked to endotypes of allergic rhinitis. Neither univariable nor multivariable analysis showed any significant correlations between AIT outcome and pre-treatment levels of cytokines or soluble ICM. In the cluster analysis, 4 clustering algorithms consistently grouped 48 of the 60 subjects into 3 distinct clusters. However, these clusters did not correlate with clinical characteristics, indicating that the clusters are unlikely to represent actual biological endotypes. The findings of this study did not provide evidence supporting the use of pre-treatment levels of cytokines and ICM as biomarkers for AIT outcome.

In this theoretical paper, we argue that ESE is caught between the existential dimension of its content and the instrumentalisation of the education system in which it operates. We argue that the tension between the existential dimension and instrumentalism manifests in five aspects of ESE, which direct ESE in profoundly different directions. We build our understanding of the existential dimension in ESE on Karl Jaspers’ (1883–1969) existential philosophy and prior research on the existential dimension in ESE. Drawing on a theoretical foundation from existential philosophy, we outline what it might mean when ESE teaching content becomes the student’s own existential question. Our view of instrumentalism in ESE is informed by recent work within educational philosophy on instrumentalism in education. The five aspects of ESE where the tension between the existential dimension and instrumentalism manifests are: (i) the aim of education, (ii) the role of knowledge, (iii) the role of students’ prior experiences, (iv) the role of emotions and (v) the role of time. In our closing discussion, we address the possibilities of making room for the existential dimension of ESE teaching content, given the dominant, and possibly hegemonic, position of instrumentalism in education today.

Over 190,000, or 8 %, of under eighteens in Sweden were born in another country. Many come from the Middle East and Africa and there is a considerable diversity of ethnic and cultural backgrounds. As most young immigrants are unlikely to return to their homelands there are compelling reasons to better understand the conditions pertinent to these youths’ wellbeing and acculturation. This mixed methods dissertation therefore aimed to develop knowledge about how wellbeing and acculturation among newly arrived Middle Eastern and African immigrant youth in Sweden can be understood and promoted. The dissertation comprises three studies investigating immigrant youth resilience, wellbeing, and acculturation from global, national, individual, and applied perspectives. Study I is a systematic review and meta-analysis of psychosocial promotion and prevention interventions targeting psychological health, wellbeing, or resilience among forced migrant children and youth throughout the world. Study II is a qualitative thematic analysis examining acculturation goals and indications of psychological resilience in response to the contextual risk and resources described by newly arrived Middle Eastern and African youth when recalling their early experiences in Sweden. Study III is a comparative Delphi study examining newly arrived youths’ and youth workers’ perspectives on activities to promote acculturation and wellbeing in youths’ social- and cultural integration process. Cumulatively, these studies contribute to the conceptual understanding of youth acculturation as a resource intensive process that requires reciprocity from dominant society throughout multiple socioecological systems if youth are to succeed in reaching their acculturation goals, maintain resilience, and experience long-term wellbeing.

Background: Atrial fibrillation (AF) is associated with significant morbidity and healthcare burden. While some patients remain asymptomatic, others experience debilitating symptoms. Traditional factors such as heart rate and rhythm irregularity do not fully explain this variability, suggesting that additional mechanisms, including inflammation, contribute to symptom severity.

Purpose: We aimed to investigate inflammation-associated protein profiles in patients with symptomatic AF before and after ablation compared to controls.

Methods: This case-control study included 100 patients aged 18–75 years with symptomatic paroxysmal or persistent AF scheduled for a first catheter ablation (pulmonary vein isolation) and 100 age- and sex-matched controls without AF. Symptom burden was assessed using the AF6 questionnaire (score range 0-60) and the modified European Heart Rhythm Association (EHRA) symptom scale. Peripheral blood samples were collected from AF patients both before and the day after ablation, and once from controls. Proteomic profiling was performed using the Olink Target 96 Inflammation panel. In addition, six AF-related proteins—Cystatin C, N-terminal pro B-type natriuretic peptide (NT-proBNP), high-sensitivity (hs) C-reactive protein (CRP), cancer antigen 125 (CA-125), hs troponin, and S100-calcium binding protein B (S100B)—were analysed separately. Principal component analysis and linear regression models (adjusted for baseline value, age, sex, rhythm at admission, baseline creatinine, and baseline NT-proBNP) were used to examine biomarker profiles, with significance defined as p<0.05 after Bonferroni correction.

Results: The median AF6 sum score was 23 (IQR: 14-32), and most patients were classified as EHRA III, indicating severe symptoms before ablation. Fifty-two inflammatory biomarkers, including interleukin-6, fibroblast growth factor-21, and interleukin-10 were significantly increased after compared to before ablation. Principal component analysis showed partial separation between AF patients (both pre- and post-ablation) and controls, indicating distinct inflammatory profiles, with some overlap between pre- and post-ablation (Figure 1). Among the six targeted proteins, all were elevated except S100B. In the case-control comparison, 12 biomarkers were significantly increased in AF patients, and NT-proBNP and Cystatin C were elevated in the separate analysis. Twenty-three patients experienced at least one ECG-verified AF recurrence between the end of the three-month blanking period and the six-month follow-up.

Conclusion: Our findings indicate that symptomatic AF is associated with a distinct inflammatory biomarker signature that is further modified by catheter ablation. These results highlight an acute inflammatory response and potential immune modulation post-ablation, underscoring the potential of inflammatory biomarkers in refining personalised management strategies for patients with symptomatic AF.

Objective: This Swedish nationwide cohort study used large-scale data to investigate the associations between bipolar disorder and somatic disorders and whether these risks differ by subtype, sex, or exposure to compulsory care.

Methods: 61,071 individuals diagnosed with bipolar disorder in inpatient (from 1973) or outpatient care (from 2001) care were compared with the general population without bipolar disorder. The cohort included individuals born in 1932 or later, with follow-up from 1973 to 2020. Cox regression models estimated associations with a range of somatic conditions, including cardiovascular, endocrine, neurological, and infectious diseases. Subtype-specific analyses were conducted in individuals with type 1 (n = 8,352) or type 2 (n = 9,674), and in those with a history of compulsory care (n = 6,748).

Results: Bipolar disorder was associated with significantly increased risks for most examined somatic conditions. The highest hazard ratios (HRs) were observed for sleep disorders (HR 3.79; 95% CI, 3.71–3.87) and dementias (HR 4.32; 95% CI, 3.82–4.79). Type 2 diabetes risk was elevated, while no association was found for type 1 diabetes. Most risks were comparable across bipolar subtypes, though certain conditions—such as migraine and fibromyalgia—were more strongly associated with type 2. Individuals with a history of compulsory psychiatric care showed elevated risks for several conditions.

Conclusions: Regardless of sex or subtype, bipolar disorder is associated with substantially higher lifetime risks of a broad range of somatic conditions. Integrated psychiatric and somatic health care may help reduce morbidity and improve outcomes.

Global environmental assessments (GEAs) provide authoritative expert knowledge on environmental issues for an international audience. Demand for GEAs is growing rapidly: their number is increasing, and their thematic scope continually expands. At the same time, the environmental, social, and political context in which GEAs operate has changed dramatically over their 50-year history. Anthropogenic environmental problems have worsened significantly, while calls for just and equitable transformations are intensifying. In response, GEAs have begun to shift from primarily diagnosing problems to offering solutions and influencing policy, and more recently, towards supporting sustainability transformations. Assessment bodies increasingly recognize that meeting these novel ambitions requires deeper engagement from social sciences and humanities (SSH). However, efforts to include these disciplines have encountered considerable challenges. In this paper, we argue that for GEAs to effectively engage SSH, they must move beyond the prevailing paradigm of environmental assessment based on objectivity, singularity, and linearity, and instead experiment with the plurality and reflexivity of a broader range of knowledges. Such an approach is essential for advancing transformative societal changes. Achieving this requires fundamental reforms to GEA structures and processes. We propose five critical steps for making GEAs more responsive to emerging challenges and more reflexive about their responsibilities within global governance regimes.

This study examines how ideas about nature and gender are affectively communicated in Nordic radical nationalism. It focuses on the strategic role of ‘positive’ affect in ecofascist visual discourse and how gendered representations structure and channel these affective processes. Three research questions guide the study: How does visual communication construct masculinity and femininity through positive affect? What work does gendered positive affect perform as a communication strategy? And how does positive affect contribute to normalizing far-right ecologism through gendered visual communication?

The thesis employs multimodal critical discourse analysis across three sub-studies, drawing on images, captions and texts collected from Telegram and Nordic radical nationalist digital archives between 2020 and 2025. A fourth sub-study consists of a systematic literature review. The first article analyses cuteness in ecofascist propaganda, finding that it disarms viewers by framing extremism as emotionally inviting, recruiting adherents through soft emotional appeals rather than overt aggression. The second identifies the ‘contemplative man’ trope, which constructs far-right masculinity as rooted in serenity and connection to the land, framing racial exclusion as a moral duty. The third examines the ‘wheat girl’ figure, showing how aestheticized femininity makes radical nationalism appear natural and desirable, framing ethnic exclusion as a biological necessity tied to fertility and tradition. The fourth article reviews existing scholarship in order to contextualize these visual tactics within broader patterns of far-right ecologism. It confirms that gender serves as a fundamental mechanism for mobilization and ideological justification.

Together, the studies demonstrate that positive affect functions simultaneously as a communication strategy and a tool for subjectification. Gendered imagery bypasses rational critique by framing exclusionary politics as beautiful, organic and emotionally fulfilling. This process recruits by making ideology emotionally appealing, subjectifies by offering gendered templates for identification and normalizes violence by embedding it within familiar frameworks of care and protection. Contemporary far-right discourse has updated fascist gender ideology for modern audiences, producing an aestheticized, softer version that is more difficult to identify as political. It is therefore essential that counter-radicalization strategies and digital literacy programmes that seek to look beyond explicit hate speech understand these mechanisms in order to engage critically with the aesthetics and emotional templates through which extremist ideologies travel and take root.

This paper explores how regional public transport authorities in Sweden interpret and apply the “whole-journey approach” in planning for sustainable mobility. The concept refers to the idea that public transport must be planned as a seamless chain of movements, integrating the entire journey, from departure to arrival, across different modes and environments. Drawing on planning documents and interviews from five non-metropolitan counties, the study shows that, while the whole-journey approach is a shared ambition, its implementation varies in both logic and practice. Two planning logics emerge: one focused on individual users and the seamlessness of their trips, and another oriented around collective service provision through high-capacity transit corridors.

Building on existing international models, the paper develops a spatial framework identifying four overlapping spaces throughout the journey: information, departure, public transport, and arrival. The analysis finds that public transport authorities have strong control over the information and public transport spaces, concentrating efforts on digital services and integration across operators. However, their influence is limited in the departure and arrival spaces, which depend on co-planning with municipalities and national authorities. This reveals a gap between ambition and institutional capacity.

The paper concludes that the whole-journey approach is best understood as a flexible planning ideal rather than a fixed method. While it offers a promising framework for linking public transport to land-use planning, its effectiveness depends on stronger coordination across planning levels and deeper engagement with the everyday mobility needs of individuals.

I denna rapport presenteras resultat ur en utvärdering av projektet IPS-integrering i vårdteam. Projektet och utvärderingen pågick under perioden 2023-03-01 - 2026-02-28 och finansierades av Europeiska Socialfonden. Utvärderingen är baserad på intervjuer med yrkesverksamma och deltagare i projektet. Syftet med rapporten är att belysa dels möjligheter och hinder som uppstår i implementeringen av IPS, dels deltagares erfarenheter av att vara med i IPS, samt med utgångspunkt i dessa resultat föreslå förbättringsförslag och viktiga områden att ta hänsyn till vid implementering av IPS i Sverige.

Utvärderingens huvudsakliga slutsatser är:

• Det går att implementera IPS inom psykiatriska team i Sverige där arbetsspecialisterna inte är anställda av psykiatrin men dettar tid och kräver kontinuitet.

• Externa faktorer är betydande för möjligheten att implementera IPS för psykosvårdens målgrupp. De inkluderar inte minst ersättningssystemens påverkan samt psykiatrins organisering. Samtidigt är det viktigt att följa förändringar i ersättningssystem då det kan uppstå glapp mellan å ena sidan praktikers och patienters farhågor, exempelvis för indragen ersättning och å andra sidan myndigheters faktiska tillämpning.

• Den långsiktiga implementeringen av IPS inom Region Örebro län är oviss. Det är viktigt att klargöra ansvarsfrågan i relation till frågan huruvida IPS är en rehabiliterande vårdinsats eller en arbetsmarknadsinsats. Fokuset på arbete, och då inte minst det arbetsgivarorienterade arbetssättet, innebär att IPS utmanar synen på hälso- och sjukvårdens arbete.

• De deltagare som intervjuats är i huvudsak nöjda med IPS-insatsen. Arbetet koordineras mellan psykosvården och arbetsspecialister utan större behov av mer deltagarintensiv samverkan. Detta har i huvudsak uppfattas som positivt av deltagare. Dock är en risk att deltagares delaktighet förbises om det uppstår ett glapp mellan den enskildes upplevelse av insatsen och arbetsspecialistens uppfattning om deltagarens deltagande.

• På grund av nedsatt arbetsförmåga har IPS-insatsen i praktiken kommit att erbjuda sysselsättning, med liten eller ingen chans för anställning, åt en stor andel deltagare. Å ena sidan innebär det en avvikelse mot IPS-metoden. Å andra sidan uttrycker de intervjuade deltagarna att sysselsättningen varit stärkande och ett viktigt komplement till socialpsykiatrins dagverksamhet.

In the early 2020s, the Swedish child welfare services (CWS) were accused in social media of kidnapping and placing migrant children in foster or family care, without their families’ knowledge or permission. This debate became referred to as a large-scale disinformation campaign, which can be understood as a discursive struggle between different versions of truth. This study explores social media content about the Swedish CWS in Arabic between 2021 and 2023. The material consisted of Facebook and YouTube posts and comments in Arabic. The analysis departed from the narrative genre of shared stories, and focused on claims about the CWS and how such claims are made credible. The findings show three types of claims within the shared story of ‘the CWS kidnapping migrant children’: families are victims of CWS’ malpractice; affected children suffer; and migrant families fear the CWS. These claims are made legitimate and credible by constructing the teller as an expert using time, place, and details while constructing the testimonies to invoke an emotional response. In conclusion, this study highlights how social reality is constructed and negotiated on social media, where migrant families’ testimonies of wrongdoings and fear become intertwined with larger stories of good and bad, truth or falsehood. It is therefore essential that claims made online is treated as signals of perceived vulnerability and institutional distance, rather than as “falsehoods” to be corrected, while CWS’ procedures and legal thresholds are clearly conveyed.