Gunilla Isaksson

Presentation of myself

I am a Professor in Occupational therapy and the head of the Department of Health, Education and Technology. 

Presentation of my research

My research profile is in the field of occupational therapy. The subject of occupational therapy includes knowledge about human activity in daily activities and participation in their habitat in relation to health and development. Occupation include culturally defined and individually evaluated activities performed daily or during different periods of life. An occupational perspective can be described as a way of looking at or understanding human activity. Already in my PhD studies I had an interest for the importance of social environment for people's participation in everyday activities, which has developed in two directions in my ongoing research, one involving frail / elderly citizens, and one with a continued focus on people with spinal cord injury. Both with the ambition to promote health and well-being for people through participation in occupation.

My research has a predominantly qualitative approach, to capture people's experiences, that is, how a person experiences, perceives, assesses and values ​​different happenings in his life. Methodologically, I have especially deepened my skills in relation to Grounded Theory, Narrative Methodology and Content Analysis, but recently also deepened me into Participatory Action Research. These methods are appropriate when my interest has been and is participatory research and to describe temporal and sequential relationships between life events. I also have experience of different data collection methods, such as individual interviews and focus group interviews over time, as well as participatory observations and field notes, memos and illustrations. Methodologically, I put great value in collecting data by following and meeting the same people several times and in those situations it is possible to gather data with varied methods to get contentful and trustworthy material. This in order to highlight the complexity of people's everyday lives and their reflections over time in relation to the life situation and the actions it includes