7.3.2025
Doctoral thesis on workplace bullying
M.Th. Mikael Nilsson’s doctoral thesis in systematic theology will be put forth for public defence at The Faculty of Arts, Psychology and Theology at Åbo Akademi University.
The thesis is entitled ”Verkligheten blev verklig på något vis”: En teologisk diskussion om ohälsa och läkande erfarenheter vid utsatthet för mobbning i arbetslivet.
The public defence of the doctoral thesis takes place on 14 March 2025 at 1PM in auditorium Argentum, Aurum, Henrikinkatu 2, Turku. You can also follow the defence online. Associate Professor Ulrik Nissen, Aarhus University, Denmark, will serve as opponent and Professor Pamela Slotte Russo, Åbo Akademi University, as custos.
Summary
Over the past four decades, workplace bullying has been highlighted as a serious social problem in both research and in public debates. Exposure to bullying is associated with severe health risks in the form of both mental and somatic problems. These risks actualise, among other things, the need for social contexts where bullying victims can have healing experiences.
This thesis discusses this problem in a theological light, which has not been sufficiently tested before. In the dissertation, people who testify to exposure to workplace bullying are heard in the form of self-written stories and in interviews. With an entry perspective based on Paul Ricœur’s phenomenological hermeneutics, the dissertation addresses prominent themes in the participants’ testimonies. The dissertation presents three overarching themes: “the narrative”, “the ex-sistence” and “the space”. In summary, healing social contexts are characterized by a social space to tell one’s story and to ex-sist, i.e. to come forth, be visible, present and exposed to, but also acknowledged by, other people.
The overarching themes are discussed in dialogue with theorists such as René Girard, Shelly Rambo, Jean-Luc Nancy, Sara Ahmed and Knud E. Løgstrup. The experiences of the bullying victim are discussed in the light of, among other things, the biblical creation story and the Gospels’ passion and resurrection stories. Taken together, the discussions reflect a social, vulnerable, but also healable human being whose wounds have a story that needs to be illuminated and told. The discussions emphasise both the hope of healing and transformation and the hard-to-heal wounds that linger and need to be acknowledged. The discussions also highlight different possibilities to regain a space to speak and act through for example trusting community (distanced space) as well as through anger, confrontation and, if possible, forgiveness and reconciliation (expanding space).
Mikael Nilsson was born in 1984 in Gnosjö, Sweden. He can be reached by phone +46 70 250 59 29 or email mikael.od.nilsson@gmail.com.
The doctoral thesis can be read online through the Doria publication archive.
Click here for a press photo of the doctoral student.
Instructions for following the doctoral defence remotely:
To follow the defence, you need the Zoom software or the Google Chrome browser. You do not need to create a Zoom account to follow the defence. If you install the application, you participate by clicking on the meeting link, after which you should allow the link to open in the Zoom app.