Marie Larsson

Doctoral student

Research areas

• Gender and sexuality
• Reproduction and bodies
• Feminist technoscience/STS
• Feminist, intersectional and critical theory
• Emotions and intimate relationships
• Qualitative research methods

Current research

The work of contracepting: young people's experiences and practices with contraceptives in Sweden.

The prevention of unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections, or contracepting, is usually treated as a medical or health issue rather than a social one. As such, a lot of the everyday work that goes into contracepting remains unseen and unrecognised. Young people in particular are often spoken about rather than spoken to when it comes to their contraceptive use. This needs to change. Instead, as I suggest throughout my research, we need to listen more to young people and take their perspectives on contraceptives seriously.

My PhD thesis departs from the accounts and stories of thirteen young women, men, and non-binary people between the ages of 18 to 29 with different sexual identities living in Sweden. It casts light the invisible everyday work that is fundamental to young people’s contracepting experiences and practices. This study provides an important shift in perspective and new insights into the social phenomenon of contraception. Ultimately, it considers how we can better support each other in doing work of contracepting, not only as medical professionals, educators, and policymakers, but as partners, family, and friends.

Published work

Quaglietta Bernal, O., and M. Larsson (coming) ’Det intersektionella perspektivet inom kriminologi’. Book chapter on intersectional theory in criminology to be published as part of an up-coming anthology on criminological theory published by Studentlitteratur [in Swedish].

Larsson, M. (2021) ‘Researching young people’s contraceptive work in Sweden’ [blog post] in genderED ECR Spotlight [blog series]. 3 September 2021. Available at: <https://www.gender.ed.ac.uk/marie-larsson-ecr-spotlight/&gt; [24 May 2023]

Book Review: Larsson, M. (2016) Review of ‘Gender in Science and Technology Interdisciplinary Approaches’ edited by Waltraud Ernst & Ilona Horwath. International Journal of Gender, Science and Technology, 8 (2), p. 310-312.