Teres Hjärpe

Teres Hjärpe is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Social Work, Lund University, affiliated with the Department of Professions and Organisation. She is actively involved in research on social work, professional autonomy, digitalization, and governance within human service organizations. Her work spans collaborations with institutions in Sweden, the US, Spain, and Italy, including the EU-funded Global Answer project and partnerships with Forte and Helsingborg Municipality.

• PhD in Social Work, Lund University (2020)
• Researcher, School of Social Work, Lund University
• International Coordinator (on leave during doctoral studies)

Her research centers on the challenges and strategies of social workers in modernized welfare systems. Key interests include professional autonomy, emotional labor, documentation practices, resistance to managerialism, and the impact of digitalization. She employs ethnographic and qualitative methods to explore how administrative logics transform frontline practice.

The recent publications of Teres Hjärpe reflect a strong thematic focus on governance, emotions, and decision-making in social work. Her work examines foster care marketization, digitalization in street-level bureaucracy, and uncertainty in child placement decisions. The articles demonstrate interdisciplinary engagement with sociology, public administration, and psychology, emphasizing qualitative analysis and critical policy evaluation.

• Resebidrag: The 14th European Conference for Social Work Research (2025)
• Resebidrag konferens ESA 2024; stream sociology of emotions (2024)
• Governance and resistance in human service organization – a comparative study of resistance cultures among social workers in Sweden and the US. (2022)
• delfinansiering, Gästdoktorand vid Hunter College NY (2016)

Teres Hjärpe has supervised various research initiatives and coordinated the Faculty of Social Sciences’ research on social resilience (2021–2023). She leads the project 'Vad professionen gör som inte datorn kan' and contributes to multiple externally funded grants, including those from Forte and the EU. Her collaborative work includes advising and peer review for journals such as Professions and Professionalism. She frequently presents at conferences and organizes academic events to bridge research and practice.

She is involved in several research teams, including the Crisis Inequalities and Social Resilience (CISR) project and InterResilience, focusing on crisis response and equity. Her international network includes collaborations with the Silberman School of Social Work (New York) and participation in EU-wide consortia. These teams emphasize interdisciplinary, comparative, and practice-oriented research.