Svedberg Helgesson, Karin

Teaching

Program Director: CUPS, program within SSE Executive Education, https://exedsse.se/program/chefsutvecklingsprogrammet-for-sjukvarden/

Course Director: Decision Making (BE917), elective within the SSE Bachelor in Business & Economics program.

Society

I serve as an appointed Economic Expert (SFS 2016:188) in the Patent and Market Court, and in the Patent and Market Court of Appeal.

Research

My research deals with problems and issues cutting across levels, types of actors, and disciplinary boundaries. This includes questions on accountability and legitimacy, knowledge and regulation, risk-management, and transformations in the conceptions of the public-private divide. More recently, I have taken an interest in the role of professionals at the civil-military boundary.

Agents of the State

"Renegotiated civil and military borders - Turning government communicators into online agents in cyber warfare"

The growing threat of cyber warfare has put new actors at the frontline. In this project, funded by the Swedish Research Council, professor Ulrika Mörth (PI) and I study how turning government communicators into intelligence agents redefines and renegotiates the boundaries between the civil and military sectors, including democratic implications. Notably, we investigate the response dilemma of the communication professionals: Should they be vigilant in accordance with military manuals on how to mitigate on-line threats? Or had they better not respond as disinformation could still be seen as part of democratic processes of freedom of expression?

We study government communicators in two policy sectors public health and meteorology/climate, and in four national political contexts (France, Germany, Sweden and the UK).

This research draws on Ulrika's and my previous research on the role of for-profit professionals in AML/CTF (see e.g. Instruments of Securitization and Resisting Subjects and Securitization, Accountability and Risk Management)

For more information about publications, please see my SSE Esploro page and links/documents to the right.

(In)Equality in Elite Organizations

Another research interest, with associate professor Ebba Sjögren, concerns the gendering effects of formalisation in processes of academic assessment and promotion and related issues (see No Finish Line.)  In further collaboration with assistant professor Pernilla Bolander, we also analyse how the "supply chain" for knowledge and the organizing of the core busienss may be implicated in the perpetuation of gender inequality in elite business organizations (supported by a grant from the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation & the Tore Browaldh Foundation).