Karen Nowé Hedvall
Senior Lecturer Head of Department
Faculty of Librarianship, Information, Education and IT (including The Swedish School of Library and Information Science)
— Swedish School of Library and Information Science
I have been working as teacher and researcher at the University of Borås since 2001. In 2007 I gained my doctorate in library and information science, in the area of information management and knowledge management. I am interested in research within these fields as well as within broader organisational issues and leadership research in libraries and information intensive organisations, among others evaluation research and research on strategy. My research can be placed in a sociocultural or sociohistorical perspective such as activity theoretical research.
Between 2015 and 2017 I participated in a research project evaluating the political organisation of Västra Götaland, a region in Sweden. My focus was on studying how politicians experience the organisation, how they are socialised into their responsibilities and how they gain the knowledge needed to decide on regional matters. I also studied how citizens experience the possibility to communicate with regional politicians. From 2015 I have together with colleagues at the Swedish School of Library and Information Science studied the development of public libraries in Sweden in the context of competence development, digitalisation and nation-wide projects. Our studies resulted in a number of reports, all of them in Swedish.
I prefer to work closely with other researchers as well as with the professionals engaging in the activities I am studying. Therefore I often design my studies so that they can build on an active cooperation between all parts, as is the case in action research and related research approaches.
Assignments
Assistant Deputy Head of the Swedish School of Library and Information Science.
Researcher's publications in DiVA (Digitala Vetenskapliga Arkivet)
Doctoral thesis title
Tensions and Contradictions in Information Management: An Activity-theoretical Approach to Information Activities in a Swedish Youth/Peace Organisation
