Danish School of Education

Ditte Winther-Lindqvist’s work is cross-disciplinary as she integrates philosophical, phenomenological, existential, and cultural-historical approaches to developmental psychology. She aims at developing an existential developmental psychology that investigates phenomena that matters to children in their lives. Research on children’s play, social life with peers, friendships, care, professional care and education, bereavement/loss, crisis, identity and transitions - are all matters that matter to children. Her current research projects are about care and play in ECEC, and parental bereavement during childhood and adolescence. Ditte’s research in early childhood, documents and debates children's development through play in different day-care environments, and investigates the role of the pedagogical, ideological and physical environment on children's play and contemporary play-culture. Processes of being and becoming and belonging among children is understood at the intersect between the socio-cultural and the personal developed through relationships and activities. Professional care in ECEC is a recent research area. Ditte’s research on adolescence is mainly bereavement research in the case of parental bereavement and adjusting to losing a parent as a teenager.