Mona Birgitta Livholts

By: Mona Birgitta Livholts
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Research Methods, Social Work

Welcome to read an interview published by University of Helsinki in Finnish!

By: Mona Birgitta Livholts
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Research Methods, Social Work

Intervju på svenska Helsingfors universitet: Professor i socialt arbete föredrar kreativa metoder för att fånga upp levda erfarenheter

By: Mona Birgitta Livholts
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Gender & Intersectionality Studies, Literature, Research Methods, Social Work, Sociolinguistics

Welcome to read my blogpost Situated Writing as Theory and Method - Or Why Don't You Write a Novella Instead of An Article?

By: Mona Birgitta Livholts
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Built Environment, Communication Studies, Environment and Sustainability, Gender & Intersectionality Studies, Memory, Psychology, Social Work, Urban Studies

I am a Swedish-Finnish social work academic and untimely academic novella writer who live and work in Helsinki, Finland since 2020. I am educated as a social worker [Swedish: socionom] with practice experience as counsellor [Swedish kurator] in the health services. In 2001 I published my dissertation ‘Women’, Welfare, Textual Politics and Critique. An Invitation to a ThinkingWriting Methodology in the Study of Welfare, in which I studied the social construction of different categories of ‘women’ and the making of welfare states in specific moments of textual politics in a Nordic welfare state context. The dissertation made use of creative and reflexive writing such as memory work, theatre and letter writing to explore complex epistemological issues and power relations in the process of producing knowledge. During 2008-2017 I founded and lead the international interdisciplinary writing network Reflexive Academic Writing Methodologies (RAW), An international research network with the aim of supporting all forms of emergent writing methods, established through – A network, A meeting place, A Stage, A Book Corner. I have continuously throughout my career worked to develop and promote theories and methods for creative life writing genres as innovative tools in education and research, such as: A ThinkingWriting Methodology (2001-), The Untimely Academic Novella (2010-), Post/Academic Writing (2012-) and Situated Writing as Theory and Method (2019-)

My main areas of research are directed towards towards glocal- and post-antropocentric social work, method innovation with particular focus on creative narrative life writing genres (diaries, memory work, letters, poetry, and photography), narrative inequalities, space, place, and memory, in rural and urban settings. Research projects include sexual violence and sexual harassment in social work, gender, space, memory and communication, exhaustion and possibility during the pandemic, immaterial monuments and narrative inequality, and environmentally sustainable working cultures among social workers in urban spaces. I have published monographs, co-edited and edited volumes in Swedish and English, including, ‘Women’, Welfare, Textual Politics and Critique. An Invitation to a ThinkingWriting Methodology in the Study of Welfare (Dissertation/Lambert Academic Publishing 2011), Emergent Writing Methodologies in Feminist Studies (Routledge Ed 2012), Discourse and Narrative Methods (Sage co-authored with Tamboukou 2015), Social Work in a Glocalised World (Routledge co-edited with Bryant 2017), and Situated Writing as Theory and Method. The Untimely Academic Novella (Routledge 2019). I am an engaged writer and facilitator who leads writing workshops and seminars in for diverse audiences across the social sciences, art, architecture, and design.

By: Mona Birgitta Livholts
Subjects: Art & Visual Culture, Built Environment, Environment and Sustainability, Social Work

Welcome to read my Urbaria blogpost - Tracing Urban Exhaustion through Slow Writing!