Biosketch: Dr. Ylva Hård af Segerstad

Ylva Hård af Segerstad is a researcher at the Department of Applied Information Technology at the University of Gothenburg. She holds a PhD in linguistics. Her primary interest is textbased interaction in digital communication technologies. Her PhD work analysed use and adaptation of written language in email, instant messaging, web chat and text messaging on mobile phones (SMS).

Hård af Segerstad has been involved in research on the writing of children in school and during their leisure time. She has also been engaged in a cross-cultural study of mobile phone use among university students.

Current research activities

Hård af Segerstad is presently pursuing a pilot study of mobile phone communication funded by one of the priority research areas at the University of Gothenburg, Language Technology. The aim of this study is two-fold: 1) to analyse the whole chain of naturally occurring spoken and text-based mobile communication in context, by analysing the sequences of interaction and its components, and 2) to develop a platform for studying mobile communication, including techniques for data collection and a corpus to be used in further research.

Hård af Segerstad is also engaged in the Nordplus-network "Nordisk sprogforståelse i de nye kommunikationskanaler" ("Nordic Language Comprehension in New Media").

Recent and forthcoming publications

Baron, Naomi S. and Hård af Segerstad, Ylva (2010). "Cross-Cultural Patterns in Mobile Phone Use: Public Space and Reachability in Sweden, the US and Japan". New Media & Society. Vol. 12 Issue 1, pp. 13-34

Baron, N. S. & Hård af Segerstad, Y. (2008). "Swedish Mobile Communication in Cross-Cultural Perspective". Internet Research 9.0: Rethinking Communities, Rethinking Place. Association of Internet Researchers (AoIR), IT University of Copenhagen, Danmark, 17 October 2008.

Hård af Segerstad, Y. & Sofkova Hashemi, S. (2008). "Digital text and writing in school". The second International DREAM Conference. 18 September 2008, University of Southern Denmark, Odense, Denmark.