Åsa Tjulin has in a short time collected almost 6.3 million in research grants!
At the beginning of the year, it was clear that Åsa and her colleagues received SEK 2 million from Forte for two years of research. Now she has raised an additional almost SEK 4.3 million from Afa Insurance for three years of research.
The call made by Afa Insurance concerns the R&D programme "Health factors – within municipalities, regions and municipal companies". Åsa's project is called "New perspectives on the future of health and medical care – how to design an attractive job?"
First of all: How do you go about bringing in so much research funding?
I am extremely curious and like to test my ideas. This means that I see research applications as a creative and FUN process. In addition, I try to find other researchers who can enrich an original idea from other disciplines. Fortunately, it is common for us researchers that we want to move forward and develop different phenomena together and are open to each other's different ways of highlighting the social issues that engage us. But, it is a matter of luck and timing also in relation to which calls are available at the moment.
Do you have any tips for your colleagues on how to write a good research application?
Yes, have fun, that's priority one. Believe in your idea and dare to try. Learn from each process, take time to reflect after each application (whether you are granted or rejected) on what that process was like and if there is anything to adjust for the next process.
See it as an eternal learning and that you have a mindset that assumes that you get the opportunity to be creative together with others! Let others have their say and be extremely open to receiving other people's reflections and thoughts. I actually think I have the best job in the world and sometimes I think it shines through even in a research application.
When it comes to this latest project: How do you plan to find out how attractive work is designed?
We (because it is not only I who received the research funding) will conduct interviews and focus group interviews with students who are in their last semester to become nurses and doctors. Then we follow up with them after a year in working life to examine their expectations of an attractive job and then check how it actually turned out.
Furthermore, we will interview those who have worked in health care for at least 15 years and see what they find to be attractive work. In addition, through discourse analysis, we want to find out how the employers (regions) present themselves as employers and what attractiveness is for them by analyzing their different types of policy documents.
As icing on the cake, we carry out a conceptual mapping to see if there is dissonance between all these perspectives on what an attractive job is and put it in relation to the overall phenomenon of what the employer can do to attract, retain and recruit employees in the future.
This seems to be extensive, who is involved in the project?
Yes, I am lucky enough to work with a wide group of wise researchers in different disciplines and universities, we have Maria Härgestam, Umeå University, Ann Rudman, Dalarna University/KI, Åsa Chaikiat Ståhl and Emma Brulin, KI, Bodil Landstad Mid Sweden University/Region Jämtland Härjedalen, and Maritha Jacobsson, Uppsala University.
Finally: Have you celebrated this, or will you celebrate in some way?
I'm so bad at celebrating things, even my own birthday... and I don't think I like to celebrate anything in advance. I would like to see that the research we do is useful, only then can I relax and celebrate!