My research focuses on human crisis and lifeline communication - that is, how people communicate and turn to media in connection with various forms of biographical interruptions and life disruptions related, for example, to illness, powerlessness, or shame. I am also interested in narrative medicine and culture and health, for instance how patient narratives can play a role in the healthcare sector.

I am co-director of Centre for Health Communication (CHEC)

More specifically, I am currently working on four research projects:

• The use of anonymous counseling services in connection with various experiences of vulnerability. In the project Rådvild, which is supported by the Velux Foundation, I am investigating - together with three colleagues and a number of external collaborators - the frequent use of anonymous counseling services from both an organizational perspective and a user perspective.
• Experiences and narratives of illness related to the use of direct-to-consumer genetic tests. This project is supported by DFF. In it, I, along with a colleague, examine the experiences of different user groups with direct-to-consumer genetic testing as well as the complex temporal experiences of illness - experiences that are linked both to the past as a genetic legacy and to the future as a possible, yet-to-be-realized diagnosis - that these tests create.
• Narrative medicine in the everyday of the clinic. The project is supported by Central Denmark Region. Together with colleagues from the School of Communication and Culture and the Department of Clinical Medicine – and in collaboration with DOKK1 and four departments at Aarhus University Hospital – I explore whether encounters with literature and narratives can contribute to physicians’ well-being, reflective practice, and sense of professional community.
• The significance of experiences of powerlessness for the use of online groups concerning chronic illness. This project is supported by the Velux Foundation, and in my subproject I focus on the experiences of bodily, social, existential, and systemic powerlessness that can be associated with living with a chronic illness, as well as on how people with chronic conditions interact online to share and process these feelings of powerlessness in various ways.