Helen Melander Bowden

Professor at Department of Education

Telephone:
+46 18 471 16 80
Mobile phone:
+46 72 999 96 26
E-mail:
helen.melander@edu.uu.se
Visiting address:
Von Kraemers allé 1 A
752 37 Uppsala
Postal address:
Box 2136
750 02 Uppsala

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CV:
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Short presentation

Senior Lecturer in Education, Associate Professor in Education

PhD in Education, MA in French and BA in Cultural Anthropology

My research centers on social interaction in different educational settings, with a particular interest in epistemics and learning.

Research

Research interests

How people are shaped and change within different social and cultural contexts is a central issue for education. Based on an interest in human interaction and communication, my research is about this and how knowledge and experiences are passed on within and between generations. I am also interested in the importance of emotions for educational practices and the role they play in the establishment of social and moral order. My research spans a wide range of educational contexts from studies of children's learning in peer groups and families, instructions and teaching in meetings between students and teachers in different school contexts, to interaction in workplaces and in professional contexts. Together with colleagues, I have, for example, studied children's digital literacy practices and the role digital technologies play in children's everyday lives in and outside of school. Another project deals with organized homework support, where my contribution particularly touched on the pedagogical practice of homework support and how the relationship to the regular school is constantly present in the interaction between tutors and students. A third example focuses on performance appraisal interviews, where we show how employees actualize their own and colleagues' (lack of) knowledge in negotiations about professional identities, work organization and distribution. My research is based on multimodal interaction analyzes of video recordings of authentic conversations.

Research projects (selection)

Uppsala Studies in Social Interaction and Discourse - UPSIDE (2025-2026). Stöd för forskarnätverk från Circus (Centre for Integrated Research on Culture and Society). Nätverksledare Helen Melander Bowden

Ett seriöst spel för utbildning emot desinformation (2023-2025). Finansierat av Myndigheten för psykologiskt försvar. Vetenskaplig ledare Thomas Nygren

Icke-talande grundskoleelevers möjligheter att kommunicera i helklass (2022). Finansierat av Norrbacka-Eugeniastiftelsen. Vetenskaplig ledare Helena Tegler

Talking and texting on the move: Exploring children's media literacy practices in peer groups (2015-2019). Finansierat av Marcus och Amalia Wallenbergs minnesfond. Vetenskaplig ledare Helen Melander Bowden

Lärande i staden: Tidsrumsliga aspekter av en förskolepedagogik (2016-2019). Finansierat av Vetenskapsrådet. Vetenskaplig ledare Katarina Gustafson

Mobility, informal learning and citizenship in the mobile preschool (2016-2018). Finansierat av Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. Vetenskaplig ledare Danielle van der Burgt

Homework support as shadow education (2016-2018). Finansierat av Vetenskapsrådet. Vetenskaplig ledare Eva Forsberg

Nordic research network on PAIs (2016-2020). In a research collaboration between conversation analysts in Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, we study complaints in performance appraisal interviews across a corpus of data collected in all three countries. The research group currently consists of Birte Asmuss, Erica Sandlund, Esa Lehtinen, Johanna Ruusuvuori, Piia Mikkola and Helen Melander Bowden.

Helen Melander Bowden

Publications

Selection of publications

Recent publications

All publications

Articles in journal

Books

Chapters in book

Collections (editor)

Conference papers

Monograph doctoral thesis

Reports

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