Fredrik Nyman

Background

Fredrik Nyman has been a Senior Lecturer (Social Work) in the Department of Psychology and Social Work since August 2023. Before joining Mid Sweden University, he worked as a Lecturer in the Institute of Gerontology, Jönköping University (2021–2023). Financed by the Wellcome Trust, Fredrik began his academic career as a PhD student at Durham University (England), where he divided his time between the Department of Anthropology and the Institute of Medical Humanities.

Fredrik completed his doctorate in 2021, which was awarded the following year. His PhD dissertation, an ethnography of biosociality and self-help support groups for older people with lung disease, examines breathlessness as something more than a physiological process. Breathing may be automatic, but it also carries personal, cultural, and existential meanings and bodily experiences. By combining biomedical knowledge with sociocultural and (post)phenomenological perspectives, the dissertation challenges the narrow clinical models of breathlessness and focuses instead on people’s subjective experiences and their impact on quality of life. In October 2024, the dissertation was published by Routledge under the title “Breathlessness and Biosociality”.

Fredrik is an active member of the Swedish Gerontological Society (SGS) and the Swedish National Network for Social Science Research on Ageing and Eldercare. With years of experience working in interdisciplinary and interprofessional environments, he considers himself a non-disciplinary researcher with a strong interest in crossing and challenging established disciplinary boundaries. Fredrik strives to create a knowledge base that not only challenges academic normativity but also benefit society at large.

Area of interest

— ethnography
— disability studies
— medical humanities
— social medicine
— social work in health care and public Health
— ageing and later life