Research interest: language use in helping relationships, psychotherapeutic discourse, institutional interaction, conversation analysis (CA), categorization and cultural norms in social interaction, social construction in talk. 

In my doctoral dissertation Public Talk on Personal Troubles: A study on interaction in radio counselling (Thell 2018) I studied how callers to a Swedish radio counselling programme talked about their personal problems with a psychotherapist. The study explored the complex and dynamic process of shaping an understanding of problematic experiences as it unfolded in the dialogues between the psychotherapist and the callers as well as in radio listeners’ Internet comments to the programme. 

In my postdoc project Social guidance on the Internet: professional challenges, strategies and practices, I investigate the challenges social workers face when they provide information and advice in a question-answer forum and chat counselling. The aim of the project is to identify and systematise professional strategies and practices the practitioners use to deal with these challenges.