SWEDISH SOUTH ASIAN STUDIES NETWORK

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Division of Gender and Medicine, Department of Clinical and Experimental Medicine; Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping University

Postal address: Genus och medicin, Hälsouniversitetet, Linköpings universitet, SE-581 83 Linköping, Sweden
Visiting address: Hälsans hus, entrance 14, 11th floor
Web page: http://www.hu.liu.se/ike/forskning/genus_medicin/amnet?l=sv

Contact persons: Professor Emerita Barbro Wijma, phone +46 (0)10 103 31 26
Research assistant Katarina Swahnberg, phone +46 (0)10 103 31 91

The Division of Gender and Medicine has been working on research projects focusing on Women, Health and Subordination for many years. The aim of the research is to develop theories, methods and analytical instruments to study the correlation between subordination and women’s health.
Katarina Swahnberg defended her doctoral dissertation on ”The Prevalence of Gender Violence. Studies of four kinds of Abuse in five Nordic Countries”, at the Division of Women's Health, Department of Molecular and Clinical Medicine, on 4 June 2003.

Educational collaboration with South Asia

In the Fall 2004 Barbro Wijma and Katarina Swahnberg visited India with the purpose of establishing students and researcher exchange as well as research cooperation between the Division of Gender and Medicine and two institutions in North India; the Birla Institute of Technology & Science (BITS) at Pilani, Rajasthan; and a medical college in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. Eventually they however decided to launch a collaboration programme with Kathmandu Medical College and Teaching Hospital (KMC) instead. From 2006 a Linnaeus Palme exchange programme grant has been given. More information.
Barbro and Katarina visited Kathmandu in November 2005 and discussed different forms of collaboration for the coming 3–5 years, a period for which the department hopes to secure continued Linnaeus Palme funding. The Nepalese contact person at KMC is Dr. Sunil Kumar Joshi (and previously Herman Dixit).
Barbro Wijma and Katarina Swahnberg both visited Kathmandu in the Fall 2006 for a planning meeting, and during the Spring 2007 Mr. Dixit came to Linköping. The actual exchange of teachers in both directions started from the Fall 2007.
The collaboration covers the exhange of minimum two teachers and two students in each direction every year.
More information about the South Asia related Linnaeus Palme grants to Swedish universities for the period 2011-12.

Three Linköping University medicine students who went to Kathmandu in 2008, Daniel Loord, Anna-Lena Morén, and Isabelle Borssén, have made a digital travel guide on Linköping University’s web site, as a service to other students. It contains practical tips as well as personal experiences from the stay in Nepal. Go for the presentation, entitled ”Anteckningar för utbyte med Kathmandu”.

Further a students exchange collaboration already exists with Loni Rural Medical College in Maharashtra (see SASNET’s page on the Faculty of Health Sciences, Linköping University). This might also eventually lead to research cooperation.

Research collaboration with South Asia

In May 2006, Prof. Wijma and Dr. Svahnberg participated in an International Conference in Colombo, Sri Lanka on ”Effective Interventions for Domestic Violence against Women”. The conference was jointly organised by International Maternal and Child Health (IMCH), Department of Women’s and Children’s Health, Uppsala University, and the Dept. of Community Medicine, University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Sri Lanka, as part of an ongoing Sida/SAREC funded research project on ”Health and Social Care for the Socially Marginalized People”, led by Prof. Gunilla Lindmark from IMCH. During the conference, Wijma and Svahnberg presented results from their NorVold study (the Nordic Research Research Initiative on Violence against Women, now closed down). See the full conference programme (as a pdf-file)
Two of the researchers who were part of the NorVold network, Prof. Berit Schei in Trondheim, Norway, and Prof. Thora Stengrimsdotter, Reykjavik, Iceland, are now members of a new network, ”Violence Against Women”, that was initiated by Prof. Gunilla Lindmark. Since Prof. Lindmark now has retired, Barbro Wjma and Katarina Swahnberg have taken over her coordinating role in the network, for which they try to secure continued funding.

In December 2009, Dr. Svahnberg received a one-year planning grant from the Swedish Research Links (Asian–Swedish research partnership programme) for a new collaboration project with Nepalese colleagues at the Kathmandu Medical College (KMC). See the full list of South Asia related projects given Swedish Research Links gants 2009.
The project will be carried out in collaboration with Dr. Sunil Kumar Joshi at KMC, and the project is entitled ”Hidden Issue: Women and Girls Trafficking in Nepal”.
Abstract: Worldwide approximately four million women and girls are victims of international trafficking yearly. Though trafficking has become a global issue, results from actions so far carried out are not sustainable. Current information on trafficking is largely anecdotal. Nepal has as ”sending country” a central part in global trafficking. Surveys reveal that 70 out of 75 districts within Nepal are vulnerable to trafficking.
The main aim of our research is to contribute to the prevention of trafficking of women and girls and promote rehabilitative measures in order to attain a better society and healthier life of the victims.
The empirical study will be conducted in Nepal.
Mainly ethnographic method will be used to map the push and pull factors of trafficking which will help us understand the problem and identify the gaps in plans and policies and their enforcement.
The hidden issue of trafficking is not only relevant for Nepal; the problem exists also in Sweden. Mechanisms nurturing violence and trafficking can be expected to be universal. Therefore the trafficking field of research is very relevant also for the Swedish research partner.