Maria Bäcke
Research groups
Boards, committees etc.
Currently holding positions as programme director for the master's programme LeaDS and as leader for the research environment CCD (www.ju.se/ccd) at Jönköping University, I have a PhD in TechnoScience. My PhD thesis (Power Games: Rules and Roles in Second Life, 2011) focuses on power, hierarchies and roles in online role-play groups. My current research centers around similar issues as I study structures of ownership, power, authority and subversion as well as digitalisation in schools and in postcolonial contexts. I have also worked in teacher education since 2004.
My current research thus merges the fields of digitalisation, education, and cultural studies. The cultural aspects have been my main research focus for a long time as I have analysed this in fictional literature, but I have drawn on this perspective when analysing non-fictional reseach material related to digitalisation, diversity, and education.
In various constellations, I'm currently studying the reasons for, and processes behind, the selection of EdTech and the implementation of AI for students. A related area of interest is students' use of the same tools in schools, at leisure centres, and in municipal adult education, drawing on issues of power and subversion in "Big Data," i.e. data ownership and data mining/harvesting.
I am the PI for the project Goda exempel för skolnärvaro (Good examples for school attendance), financed by ULF for the years 2025-2026, where researchers from Jönköping University and the University of Gothenburg collaborate with school leaders and staff in Jönköping and Värnamo. The goal is to coordinate efforts and facilitate for children and youngsters who either fail to attend school (i.e. problematic school absence) or risk finding themselves in that position.
I am the Swedish PI for the GTSF (Global Teachers for a Sustainable Future) project funded by Erasmus+. The focus of the GTSF project is internationalisation at home within teacher education.
Other tasks and qualifications
See ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9212-8551
Hemsida: http://www.baecke.se