Welfare resilience in future crises in the Nordic region
The call is now closed.
The call is aimed at researchers with a doctoral degree and doctoral students (who have started their doctoral programme) who are active in a research environment in the Nordic region. To be considered for assessment and funding, a complete application with a text proposal must be submitted electronically through the specified application form before the call closes.
The main aim of the project as a whole is to contribute new and urgent perspectives on how to increase the resilience of welfare in the Nordic region in future crises from a gender perspective. The publication will have a particular focus on health care. By producing a publication, the project is expected to contribute to increased knowledge to better understand and analyse the challenges and thus provide better opportunities to make decisions that strengthen crisis preparedness and increase the resilience of welfare in the Nordic region.
The open call will identify relevant perspectives, knowledge and research environments in the Nordic region. Accepted authors will be invited to a joint workshop in the start-up phase of the writing process, which aims to contribute to Nordic knowledge creation in co-operation by bringing different research environments, researchers and perspectives into dialogue with each other. Contributions from the publication are intended to form the basis for political discussion.
Since the overall theme is future crisis scenarios, the essays are meant to be exploratory in nature but grounded in research-based knowledge. Three starting points will form a common backbone for all essays in the publication. They will explore (1) resilience and preparedness in future crises, (2) in the Nordic region and (3) from a gender perspective. These three starting points encompass a diversity of approaches and interpretations:
With these three starting points as a foundation, the aim is for the essays to contribute new and urgent perspectives within one of the themes below or neighbouring themes that focus on welfare and health care. The thematic areas overlap to some extent and neighbouring themes may also be relevant, as long as they are clearly based on the three fundamental starting points.
The Nordic welfare societies have partly different structures for health care. Moreover, several logics and political ideas about the design and governance of healthcare systemCs have prevailed at different times. This concerns issues of how systems are organised, governed and financed. These may include questions of national legislation and regional autonomy, of public and private financing and the relationship between them, or of the systems of public and private providers, or their respective training and research functions.
This theme also includes issues related to citizens’ access to health care, including different types of care such as care for the elderly. This may involve questions about equal or unequal access to health and nursing care in the various parts of the care chain, such as primary and specialised care, about equity and gender equality in the quality of care and health care, and about both access and quality in different regions of the Nordic region. It also includes questions about principles for resource allocation and outcomes in practice, care based on need and issues of freedom of choice.
The healthcare sector encompasses a wide range of occupations and professions, and therefore a wide range and depth of occupational and professional knowledge. This theme addresses cross-cutting issues relating both to the people who work and are recruited to jobs in the sector and to the knowledge needed for a well-functioning healthcare service.
This also includes questions about how to supply healthcare systems with the right skills. Projections show that there will be a great need for new recruits to healthcare professions and occupations in the coming decades, not least because of the ageing population. Issues relating to the content and dimensioning of the education system and different regional conditions and needs are addressed here. Conditions in the educational assignments in vocational programmes and in higher education, as well as its links to the education and research assignment of healthcare providers (both public and private), are also part of the theme. There are also questions about where different types of jobs are located, which parts of the healthcare system are established in which regions, and where trained staff choose to work.
This theme also includes issues related to the conditions and opportunities for continuing professional development in the various professions and occupations in the sector. Those already working in the healthcare sector need continuous professional development as new competences are required, new technologies are introduced and new needs arise. The right skills also need to be available where the skills are needed. This involves the conditions and opportunities to steer and distribute expertise to where the needs are greatest. The healthcare sector also has different ways of organising learning and valuing knowledge within its services, and knowledge production and learning look partly different for different professions within the sector. The knowledge and work carried out in welfare health care also tend to be valued in different ways. This is expressed not least in terms of how the work is compensated financially through different salaries. There are also questions about how different skills within the professions and occupations of the sector are made visible and validated, and how learning is organised.
This theme includes issues related to the specific working conditions of healthcare professionals. For example, there is a requirement for care to be available 24 hours a day, every day of the year, and healthcare professionals in many parts of the health and social care sector are expected to be available and to share this burden. This also touches on issues related to the fact that different professions and occupations in the sector have partly different conditions and working environments. For example, it may be that some professions and occupations have greater control over their work tasks and working hours. It may also be that conditions differ between primary and specialised care, within the care professions, as well as between private and public care employers. This also includes questions about regional differences in the conditions provided and about opportunities and expectations for full-time and part-time work, for example.
This may also involve the relationship between different healthcare professions, as well as the relationship between patients and healthcare professionals, creating specific conditions and challenges for the work environment. There are natural hierarchies that are based on, for example, licence requirements and prescribed tasks for different professions and occupational groups.
This theme also includes issues of norms and expectations, for example regarding different types of specialisations, as well as issues of power relations, discrimination and harassment. The relationship between patients or, for example, elderly care recipients and healthcare staff, also creates specific conditions, not least in terms of the risk of harassment among staff.
The proposals accepted in the call will be developed into exploratory texts: essays. Based on previous research, the essays should reflect on, test and explore new and urgent questions and perspectives on how to increase the preparedness and resilience of welfare in future crises. The selected writers will be invited to a joint workshop to start the writing process, exchange knowledge and enable synergies between the different texts. The expected length of the essays is 3000-6000 words (excluding references).
Proposals should be written in English and have a maximum length of 1000 words. The text proposal should clearly state how the three fundamental starting points are understood, what themes the essay will explore and what issues the essay will primarily investigate. The text proposal should also include some tentative reflective responses/reasoning on the issues in focus.
For PhD researchers: Attach 1-3 previous scientific publications that you have co-authored/authored and that serve as the starting point for the essay.
For doctoral students: attach 1-3 scientific publications that you have co-authored/authored and that serve as the starting point for the essay or alternatively attach an updated project plan/synopsis for the thesis in which the empirical basis of the thesis is clearly stated. If a proposal has several authors, each author can attach 1-3 scientific publications.
The submission must be made electronically and the submission form can be found here once the call opens, 18 June.
The text proposals will be assessed on the basis of:
The selection will also take into account the thematic diversity of the essays in the publication.
The text proposals will be reviewed by PhD researchers representing several scientific disciplines.