Trust, Knowledge and Authority in the Everyday Workings of the Danish Welfare State

My ph.d. project explores the interaction between sundhedsplejersker (visiting nursing/baby nurses) and toddler parents. The project examines the role of the welfare worker as an educator, an aide and a controlling official, and how parents and nurses navigate in this cross field of different roles and agendas. Not least do I look at trust and the role it plays in these interactions, as well as how it is manifest itself physically, verbally and in other ways.

My project builds on 11 months of ethnographic fieldwork with Sundhedsplejen (the visiting nurses) and toddler parents in Silkeborg municipality, Denmark, carried out form 2019-2020.