Meet the Emma Landby project's new research assistant

Tell us - who are you and what you will be working on in the project?

My name is Emma started working on the project in September. Before that, I worked at Umeå University. My previous research has been based on time-spatial perspectives and the focus has been on social sustainability, equality and accessibility. In my thesis, I focused on mobility for families who have wheelchair children. Among other things, I have studied how everyday travel and holiday travel work, what challenges exist and how families use different adaptation strategies to enable mobility. The thesis showed great complexity in everyday life as well as on holiday and that it is important to have a family perspective in the development of accessible environments, but also in the design of support measures such as transport services and personal assistance since the whole family can be affected by inaccessible physical and social structures when it comes to is a child who has a disability.

In this project, I bring my experience and knowledge in social sustainability, accessibility and mobility to study older people's stays in natural areas. Right now, I am investigating the importance of natural areas when choosing a home. Does nature have any impact on where you want to live as an elderly person and is there any difference between different groups? I use survey material and my preliminary results show that nature is very important, especially if you are close to natural areas where you live right now and if you are used to spending time in nature almost daily. Having natural areas in connection with attractive housing options for older people is therefore an important issue that community planning should take into account.