Tanja Joelsson - PhD

 

 

I defended my thesis in spring 2013 within the field of Critical Studies on Men and Masculinities. I am part of a wider research project titled ”Doing Driving, Doing Design: Gender, Age and Transport Practices” (4D), funded by Vinnova, Linköping University and Luleå University of Technology. The focus of my doctoral thesis is to analyse young men’s individual and collective mobility practices from an interdisciplinary angle, specifically in relation to violence and violations.  

 

My research project evolves around issues of mobility, gender, age, class and place. The overall aim is to understand young people’s (particularly young men’s) risk-taking practices with motor vehicles in public space (the practices that fall under the scope of ”risk-taking” are practices that have the direct or indirect effect of harming the practitioner and/or others, such as speeding and drifting). The main research questions concern how risk-taking with vehicles can be understood from a feminist approach and how these risk-taking practices relate to conceptions and norms around gender, age, class and place. I am also interested of the implications of these practices in a wider sociocultural context, thus reframing risk-taking practices as violations.

The ethnographic material consists of fieldwork carried out in a periurban community in Sweden in year 2010. The field work consist of participant observation of regular visitors aged between 15 to 18 years old (fifteen boys and seven girls) at the local youth center and a central meeting place in the community in the evenings – the local shop’s entrance courtyard – as well as six group interviews and twelve individual interviews with the same visitors. These visitors are known as the local greasers. I have also conducted what I call ride alongs where I have been a passenger in some of the greasers’ cars. Also, seventeen pupils from grade nine in the local high school – not regular visitors of the youth center – were interviewed, in groups of two (thirteen interviews) or individually (four interviews). 

 

My thesis can be read and downloaded here.

 

Main research interests

· Studies on young age

· Research on space and place 

· Men’s violences

· Feminist theories

· Feminist knowledge production and public reception of feminist knowledge

· Academic working conditions from a feminist perspective

 

Short CV

PhD, Thematic Unit of Gender Studies, Department of Tema, Linköping University (2007-2013)

School of Women’s Studies, York University, Toronto, Canada (2006-2007)
MA in Linguistics (minor: gender research), Uppsala University (2007)
Research Assistant, Feminist Studies in Social Sciences, Uppsala University (2004-2006, 2007-2011)

 

Teaching

Spring 2010: Våld, makt och kön (7,5 hp)

Spring 2011-Fall 2012: Thesis supervisor in the Master Programme in Child Studies

Fall 2011-Spring 2012: Tutor at the Master course "Teaching intersectional gender studies"

Fall 2011-Spring 2012: Tutor at the Programme for environmental research

Spring 2012: Headteacher at the course (En)Gendering International Development (7,5 hp), Department of Government, Uppsala University

 

Research groups

4D: Jeff Hearn, Ulf Mellberg, Dag Balkmar

Also part of the research network on transport and planning FAST.

 

positions of trust

2012-: Board Member of Sveriges Genusforskarförbund (The Swedish Association for Gender Researchers), responsible for the network for Doctoral Candidates and Postdoctoral Fellows

2012- : Board Member of Nordic Association for the Study of Men and Masculinities (Nordisk förening för forsking om män och maskuliniteter)

 

Highlighted publications

2013: Space and Sensibility. Young Men's Risk-Taking with Motor Vehicles, Linköping Studies in Arts and Science, Dissertations No 574, Linköping: Linköping University

2012: Balkmar, Dag & Tanja Joelsson, "Feeling the Speed - the Social and Emotional Investments in Dangerous Road Practices", Gender and Change. Power, Politics and Everyday Practices, Karlstad University Press

2010: Balkmar, Dag & Tanja Joelsson, "Den bioniske mannen på autoerotiska äventyr – mäns risktagande i trafikrummet" [The bionic man goes autoerotic - theoretic keys towards a refined understanding of men’s risk taking in public space], NORMA 5:1, pp 27-44

2009: Balkmar, Dag & Tanja Joelsson, “Burning Rubber, Marking Territory: Technology, Auto-Erotic Desires and Violating Mobility”, in: Åsberg, Cecilia, Harrison, Katherine, Pernud, Björn, Gustavsson, Malena (eds.) Gender Delight, Science, Knowledge, Culture and Writing…for Nina Lykke. The Tema Genus Series of Interdisciplinary Gender Reseaerch in Progress and Transformation, No. 1, Linköping University

2007: “Masculinity”, Guts and Glory. Festskrift till Eva Lundgren (Guts and Glory. Festschrift to Eva Lundgren, eds Åsa Eldén & Jenny Westerstrand ), Uppsala Universitet: Universitetstryckeriet

2005: ”Mansvåldet, (köns)makten och männen – den kommunala arenan” (”Men’s violence, (gender) power and men – the municipal arena”), Socialmedicinsk tidskrift (Journal of Social Medicine), nr 6

2004: Slag i luften. En utredning om myndigheter, mansvåld och makt (“Slag i luften” An inquiry on Swedish Government agencies, men¿s violence and power. Review of Action to Combat Violence Against Women), Swedish Government Official Reports 2004:121