Birgitte Ahlsen

About

I am qualified as a physiotherapist and have extensive clinical experience, mainly from primary health care. My interest has been particularly directed at patients with chronic muscle pain, and how such pain can be understood and treated. In my PhD, I analyzed illness narratives of men and women with chronic pain from a gender perspective. More recently, my research has focused on clinical encounters in physiotherapy; on interaction and communication between therapist and patient and how knowledge of illness and health is negotiated and produced in clinical encounters. My interest and enthusiasm for narratives and narrative analysis has followed me all the way. I am inspired by the medical humanities and concerned with how theories and perspectives from other fields and disciplines can help to shed new light on physiotherapy as profession and practice and contribute to developing health care services in the future.

I am responsible for the Master’s specialization in psychomotor physiotherapy, and leader of the Research Group (Re)habilitation – individual, services and society.

Fields of study

Subject areas

Rehabilitation   Fysioterapi   Critical culture studies   Chronic illnesses   Narrative analysis   Physiotherapy and Mental Health   Illness narratives   Research