Research

Researching and Teaching

I have been engaged in research and teaching in communication studies since 1989, and, since 1994, I have been researching and teaching within the field of communication at Roskilde University. The scope of my research and teaching has been broad, spanning the empirical fields of mediated, interpersonal, organisational, political, environmental and health communication but, with respect to theory and methods, concentrating on sociocultural approaches.            

For the past 14 years, I have specialised in approaches to communication studies that build on dialogic communication theory and poststructuralist thinking and are collaborative and practice-oriented. I have supervised many projects (including masters' dissertations and Ph.D. theses) on dialogic communication in different societal and organisational contexts. From 2008 until 2021, I taught a Masters' course on dialogic communication.

I co-founded the Research Group in Dialogic Communication at Roskilde University in 2011 and have been the head of the group since then. The research group provides a research environment for researchers and teachers at all stages of their careers. Crucially, our group has included, and currently include,s a large number of  Ph.D. scholars mostly doing co-funded, collaborative projects in the field of communiciation in social and health care and communication for social change. 

In the research group, we have developed an approach to dialogue and collaboration that has a dual focus on the potential of dialogue and collaboration AND the challenges that arise from their complexity. The approach theorises and analyses the tensions arising from the inevitable workings of power. I have worked with this approach in collaborative, participatory research on public engagement with science and the environment, planned communication campaigns, collaborative research processes, co-learning in education, and, in particular, person-centred social and health care. 

Here is some information about two of my most recent projects:

 In 2017-2018, I carried out an action research project, toger with Michael Scheffmann-Petersen and in collaboration with the Zealand Region, designed to further develop the Zealand Region's “Active Patient Support” programme, a patient-centred health care initiative in which nurses counsel patients with chronic illnesses. 

From 2019 to 2022, I carried out a collaborative research project with my colleagues, Lisbeth Frølunde and Maria Bee Christensen-Strynø, on dance as a form of creative arts therapy in the person-centred treatment of Parkinson's disease. The project was supported by a grant from the  HumPraxis Programme, The Velux Foundations and was a collaboration between the Parkinsons Association, Denmark, Tivoli Ballet School and our research group at Roskilde University.