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Ylva Ågren

Senior Lecturer

Department of Education, Communication and Learning
Telephone
+46 31-786 54 59
+46 766-18 54 59
Mail
ylva.agren@gu.se
Visiting address
Läroverksgatan 15
41120 Göteborg
Postal address
Box 300
40530 Göteborg

About Ylva Ågren

I am an Associate Professor of Child and Youth Studies in the Department of Education, Communication and Learning.

My research focuses on children’s digital lives, paying particular attention to their visibility, participation, cultural production and labour in digital media environments. The focus is on how these practices are shaped at the intersection of children's rights, commercialisation and digital forms of expression. Within this framework, my research examines how children are positioned within, and relate to, contemporary consumer culture, and the values and norms surrounding children, consumption and digitalisation.

Adopting an interdisciplinary and critical approach, my research is firmly rooted in critical childhood studies. Children’s perspectives and child-centred perspectives are a central point of departure.

My doctoral dissertation examined how siblings aged 4–9 use and interact with media in everyday family life at home. This work was awarded the BRIO Prize in 2017 in recognition of its valuable contribution to the study of children in a mediatised world. This marked the beginning of a sustained research interest in children’s digital lives, laying the foundation for a methodological and ethical approach that foregrounds children’s perspectives and voices.

On-going and completed research projects

Children as professional influencers and internet celebrities (project leader)

This project aims to explore Swedish children’s own assessments on the phenomenon of internet celebrities from the perspectives of child influencers. Furthermore, it examines how different digital platforms, promotional material and images work in constructing and reconstructing child influencing culture as well as children and childhood more broadly. The project also direct attention to how the practices of childhood influencing might be shaped by inequalities of ethnicity, gender orientation, sexuality, and social class. Additionally, the study contributes insights into the potentially changing roles of children and adults when children are influencers.

Children’s Cultural Heritage - the visual voices of the archive

This project addresses the urgent task of exploring how to integrate Swedish children’s cultural heritage and make it an indisputable part of Swedish cultural heritage by asking: what rights do children have to their own cultural heritage? The focus is on how to collect, preserve and archive children’s own cultural expressions for the future.