Klara Rydström

About

I'm a gender researcher with a PhD in Human Work Sciences, focusing on the organization of work, working conditions and inequality.

I defended my dissertation in 2024, titled Unpacking Online Retailing: the Organization of Warehouse Work and Inequality, based on an ethnographic study of five different online retail warehouses in Sweden. The dissertation demonstrates that inequality is reproduced as an effect of how work is organized in relation to the "on-demand" logic characteristic of online retailing. In addition to inequality expressed through gendered and racialized class relations between managers and warehouse workers, the dissertation also highlights inequality produced by class and shaped by gender and race/ethnicity among groups of warehouse workers. The fact that work was organized in partly different ways across the five warehouses led to variations in the shape and degree of inequality.

From autumn 2026, I will conduct research within the projects FutureFilm North, focusing on working conditions and skills provision in the film industry in Norrbotten, and CreativeTech North, focusing, among other things, on how gender equality and inclusion shape the opportunities for the gaming industry in northern Sweden to attract and retain staff. Both projects are led by CDT.

Together with Eugenia Segerstedt, I'm participating in the project "Kultur och samhällsfond" (KOSA), led by the Municipality of Luleå (2025-2028). More information about KOSA and our role in providing research-based knowledge support can be found here.

Pedagogical merits

I'm teaching in several courses, often focusing on issues of equality, gender and ethnicity. For example:

• S0058A. Perspektiv på arbetsliv och arbetsmarknad
• S0069A. Social stratifiering: Klass, kön och etnicitet
• G0010N. Industriell ekonomi med ett hållbarhetsperspektiv
• G0011A. Kunskapsbaserade jämställdhetsinsatser i organisationer och samhälle

I'm the co-supervisor to Wilhelm Tosser Franklin.

Prizes and awards

• "Prize for Best Dissertation 2024 in the field of Work-Life and Work Environment" awarded by FALF – Forum för arbetslivsforskning