Linn J Sandberg

• PhD Gender Studies
• Lecturer at Södertörn University

On 25 February 2022, Alzheimer Europe launched a new report: “Sex, gender and sexuality in the context of dementia: a discussion paper”. Sex, gender and sexuality are fundamental aspects of people’s lives. Information about people’s sex, gender and sexuality is typically considered as socially salient and serves, to some extent, as a basis for how...

Subjectivity is a widely explored topic in dementia studies, in both the humanities and the social sciences. Persistent discourses of “a loss of self” in dementia have been challenged by scholars, who argue for the need for continued recognition of the person with dementia and that subjectivity in dementia may be sustained. So far, however, there i...

People with cognitive disabilities are commonly positioned as risky sexual subjects. This article discusses the discursive production of sexual normates in the form of desirable and normative able-minded sexual subjects, in scientific research on the sexuality and cognitive disabilities of younger and older individuals (in particular those with dem...

New sexual scripts on later life are emerging, discourses on “sexy oldies” challenge pervasive discourses on asexual old age. Still, sexuality among people with dementia, who are generally older, is rarely affirmed. Research on sexuality and dementia is, moreover, dominated by biomedical accounts that regard sexual and intimate behaviours as expres...

This chapter explores touch as an essential aspect of ageing embodiment, which also has a significant impact on experiences of gendered and sexual embodiment in later life. Drawing on an empirical study with older Swedish men who were both interviewed and asked to write ‘body diaries’ about their everyday embodiment, the research argues that their...

Despite person-centred approaches increasingly focusing on looking at the person in dementia instead of the pathology, the role of gender in dementia has been little explored. This article discusses how pervasive discourses on a loss of self and dementia as abject are interwoven with a de-gendering of persons with dementia. The cultural anxiety tha...

While grandparenting literature has primarily discussed intergenerational relations in families with ‘normal’ everyday problems, such as childcare, it has largely neglected more troublesome issues, such as domestic violence. Based on interviews with ten children and teens, this article explores grandchildren’s experiences of how their grandparents...

This paper explores the potential for cultural gerontology to extend its ideas of diversity in aging experiences by opening space to rethink conceptions of successful aging futures. We propose a ‘queering’ of aging futures that disrupts the ways that expectations of a good later life and happy aging are seen to adhere to some bodies and subjectivit...

Intimate partner violence is often known to a wider social network. Still little research exists on the experiences of social networks, how they respond and how women and children experiencing intimate partner violence perceive these responses. This article draws on 16 qualitative interviews with women victims of intimate partner violence, intimate...

While there is a growing research interest in the experiences of children exposed to intimate partner violence (IPV), the role of children's social networks, other than the role of mothers, has been little discussed. The aim of this article is to study older children's stories of how they, and the adults in their social networks, respond to IPV. Mo...

The phone suddenly rings on an October evening, close to midnight. Christina’s husband picks it up and this time it is serious. They get in the car immediately, and as they arrive, Christina’s daughter is standing outside her house with her two children. The daughter has been severely beaten by her husband, the children’s father. Locks of hair are...

Recent years have seen increasing discussions of sexuality in later life. Today, continued sexual activity is gradually understood as a positive and healthy aspect of aging, in contrast to how aging historically was primarily associated with asexuality. Old men’s sexual function, in particular, has been a topic of notable interest to scholars and p...

Grandparents whose grandchildren are exposed to domestic violence are faced with some unique challenges in their grandparenting, which have thus far been little discussed in research. This paper discusses the narratives of 10 Swedish grandparents whose grandchildren have been exposed to violence towards their mother. The aim was to explore grandpar...

Urban and rural geographies should be further included in feminist intersectional research on intimate partner violence (IPV). The article reviews existing research on the challenges facing rural victims of IPV. This research makes visible the specific problems rurality imposes on victims of IPV. However, research on rural IPV risks being misused a...

Discourses on old age and ageing are framed in narrow and binary ways, either as a decline narrative or through discourses of positive and successful ageing. The decline narrative, on the one hand, is highly centred on the decline of the ageing body as frail, leaky and unbounded, and on how old age is characterised by non-productivity, increasing p...

Despite an increasing emphasis on sexuality as lifelong and part of healthy ageing, the voices of older men and women are seldom heard. Based on qualitative interviews with Swedish heterosexual men aged 67–87, this article discusses how men make sense of later life sexuality through narratives of intimacy. In the interviews, intimacy is described a...

This article discusses the status of the concept of hegemonic masculinity in research on men and boys in Sweden, and how it has been used and developed. Sweden has a relatively long history of public debate, research, and policy intervention in gender issues and gender equality. This has meant, in sheer quantitative terms, a relatively sizeable cor...

This paper takes its outset in the body, not as pre-discursive but still as prerequisite for social life. The body is looked upon as being made possible through discourse at the same time as making discourse possible. In an attempt to theorise and develop ideas on older men's bodies for my ongoing PhD project I am in this paper engaging in feminist...