Biosketch: Professor Åsa Mäkitalo

Åsa Mäkitalo is Professor in Education and co-director of LinCS. From 2010 she is also head of the University of Gothenburg LETStudio, a strategic initiative for interdisciplinary research on learning.

Mäkitalo specialises in research on institutional communication from a sociocultural and dialogical perspective. Her research concerns what it implies to appropriate, collectively maintain, and develop institutional forms of knowing. The analytical focus is on institutional categories which are fruitful to analyse in terms of their sociogenesis underpinning institutional forms of knowing, but also in terms of how they are used in organising and coordinating institutional practice as well as participants' sense-making and reasoning. Mäkitalo also takes an interest in the immanent pedagogy of institutions in the encounter with citizens; particularly the activities institutions arrange in order to intergrate or activate individuals or groups to participate a normatively preferred community.

Current research activities

Mäkitalo is currently engaged in studies of academic, workplace and classroom settings, mainly in the following projects and research initiatives:

• LETStudio – The University of Gothenburg Learning and Media Technology Studio
• Learning to support: Bridging educational knowledge traditions and situated knowing in technologically intensive work practices, funded by the Swedish Research Council
• LINT - Learning, interactive technologies and the development of narrative knowing and remembering, funded by the Wallenberg Foundation, the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation and the Swedish Research Council
• LinCS - The Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in contemporary Society. Funded by The Swedish Research Council.
• NordLearn - Nordic Centre for Research on Learning and Media. In cooperation with University of Oslo, University of Turku and Tallin University, funded by NordForsk.
• Epistemic topologies: Arranging for advanced knowledge articulation, funded by the Swedish Research Council.

Recent and forthcoming publications 

Hall, C., Mäkitalo, Å., Slembrouck S. & Doherty, P. (forthcoming, 2012). Pursuing trust in child protection meetings: familiarization and informality. To appear in C. Candlin & J. Crichton (Eds.), Discourses of trust. Basingstoke: Palgrave Mac Millan.

Jonasson, C., Mäkitalo, Å. & Nielsen, K. (submitted). Teachers' handling of educational dilemmas: Co-existing demands of increased student retention and performance.

Eriksson, A-M. & Mäkitalo, Å. (submitted). Referencing as practice: learning to write and reason with other people's texts in Environmental Engineering education.

Mäkitalo. Å. (submitted) Learning to make a case in law school. Categorizing events and actions in legal discourse. Psicologia Culturale (Special issue on Context, culture and the law).

Mäkitalo, Å. (2012). Professional learning and the materiality of social practice. Journal of Education and Work, 25(1), 59-78.

Mäkitalo, Å. (2011). Minnande och responsivitet: att transformera information till argumentation. I R. Säljö (Red.), Lärande och minnande som social praktik (s. 338-360). Stockholm: Norstedts.

Säljö, R., Mäkitalo, Å. & Jakobsson, A. (2011). Appropriering genom argumentation: Kontroverser, mångtydighet och tillägnande av redskap för tänkande. I R. Säljö (Red.), Lärande och minnande som social praktik (s. 126-155). Stockholm: Norstedts.

Säljö, R., Jakobsson, A., Lilja, P., Mäkitalo, Å. & Åberg, M. (2011). Att förädla information till kunskap: lärande och klassrumsarbete i mediesamhället. Stockholm: Norstedts.