PhD Projects

Designing Gamified Learning Environments

Jakob Bandelin is a PhD student in Information Systems and a member of the Swedish Research School of Management and Information Technology (MIT). His project examines how game-inspired learning formats, such as educational escape rooms and quest-based activities, can be used to promote engagement, collaboration, and problem-solving in higher education. These activities combine immersive storytelling, physical and digital puzzles, and team-based challenges to create active, student-centered learning environments that go beyond traditional lectures and exams.

Bandelin’s research is grounded in theories of gamification and 4E cognition, with a particular focus on embodied and situated learning. Using a Design Science Research (DSR) approach, the project explores how IT-enhanced environments that integrate digital tools and physical interaction can foster more engaging and participatory educational experiences.”

AI as part of organising and organisations, a communicative perspective

Sandra Bergman is researching the integration of AI-powered systems such as chatbots within an organisational context. The project is a part of the research environment at informatics and media called Worlds of AI.

Bergman’s research interest is pragmatic and working closely with industry and practitioners to find solutions for real-world problems. In her PhD project the main focus is how AI chatbots influence the organising process and how the organisation changes by including non-human actors. Of particular interest is how these non-human agents affect trust in and within the organisation.

Sandra Bergman is a part of the Swedish Research School of Management and Information Technology (MIT).

Russian digital nationalism in times of war: media ecologies, practices, and national identity construction

Alexandra Brankova’s PhD project investigates Russian nationalist media ecology, practices, and discursive constructions of Russian national identity pre- and during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine (2018–2023). It critically assesses the processes of nationalist mobilisation and nation-building in times of war. It also maps and evaluates the characteristics of nationalist new media ecosystems. The research approaches developed in the project are related to digital nationalism, new media ecology, and the discursive construction of national identity. The project is affiliated with critical discourse studies and discourse historic approach.

The research design and data collection methods for the project include digital ethnography, data scraping, and more in-depth discourse analysis of textual data. The project is interdisciplinary bridging media and communication and nationalism studies.

Discursive construction of the far-right in Brazil

Pedro Camelo’s PhD project is an investigation about the discursive construction of the far-right in Brazil. In order to assess the research theme, Camelo considers local traditions and international tendencies, aiming to shed light on the mediated underpinnings of the recent rise of the far-right in the country. The proposed examination is based on theoretical premises and methodological tools of critical discourse studies and draws on Laclauian and ideational approaches to populism and the notion of “neoliberal logics” (Phelan, 2014).

How to design digital services to support sustainable consumer decision-making

Tazrin Hassan’s PhD project involves in investigating the factors influencing consumers’ decision-making regarding food purchase, both before and during food purchasing. She seeks to develop an understanding on how to design digital services to support sustainable consumer decision-making.

Through a design science research approach, a digital technology (artefact) will be created in an iterative process of theoretical studies, inquiry into stakeholder needs and views, and formative evaluations of the emerging digital service. In this process, consumer decision-making is one important theoretical influence, complemented by information systems design literature, e.g., persuasive design principles, user experience design, and design science methodology.

Design solutions for social interaction in public environments

Karin Johansson is a PhD student in Human-Computer Interaction. Her PhD project focuses on designing solutions for social interaction in public environments. A major part of the PhD work is related to the Vinnova-funded social innovation project ABC for meaningful meetings, a project that aims at designing interventions, models and tools in order to increase community feeling and decrease involuntary loneliness in a newly developed city district in Linköping municipality. Within the project researchers in human-computer Interaction and psychology collaborate with a sustainability focused non-governmental organisation (NGO) and a publicly owned real estate company. The project is one of several projects funded within a Vinnova call that focuses on Social sustainability in the physical environment.

Karin Johansson – with a background as a designer, company owner and project leader – is a researcher close to practitioners. She is using a research-through-design approach and an autoethnographic inspired approach, following and participating in multisectorial design processes, while studying them.

Controlling the uncontrollable: the impact of reproductive health apps

Beatrice Tylstedt is a PhD student within the Swedish Research School of Management and Information Technology (MIT) and her research is part of the project ”Controlling the Uncontrollable: The Impact of Reproductive Health Apps on Experiences of Pregnancy, Healthcare Professionals’ Work and Data Governance” funded by the Swedish Research Council. The project studies the digital management of reproductive health and how it impacts individual experiences and social understandings of reproduction, fertility, sexuality and the body.

In her own work Tylstedt uses a critical feminist perspective, looking particularly at dimensions of power. Tylstedt approaches reproductive health apps as part of the broader FemTech Industry and connects research on the industry with that of user’s lived experience. Tylstedt’s research also studies the content of the apps themselves and looks at how knowledge, social values and norms are produced, reproduced and challenged within the apps.

Abortion discourse and the nature of democracy

Yanthe Zebregs is a PhD student within Media and Communication Studies. Her doctoral dissertation work uses abortion discourse as empirical entry point, to engage with the wider nature of democratic and political dynamics. Drawing on critical discourse studies of media and political communication – and researching both global and national media and communication contexts – Zebregs’ work deconstructs the ideological underpinnings of contemporary global discourses on abortion and on wider women’s rights. Studying abortion discourse specifically through discursive ontologies, the study aims to assess the roles of mediation and (political) communication in the context of the logic of normalisation under far-right, inequalities and (changing) cultural and political structures.