Rickard Ulmestig

My research frequently involves issues on labour market policy and social assistance in relation to the organisation of the Swedish welfare systems. My main focus is municipal organisations that offer local labour market/activation schemes and organisations that handle social assistance. As part of this interest, I currently work on several ongoing projects in this field.

I work together with several colleagues from IFAU in an extensive research programme funded by Forte (information about the research programme is available here).
We are currently in the final stages of the programme involving the publication of a theoretical article on impact studies within the field of activation, and an article on the effect study of activation schemes organised by ten Swedish municipalities.

Together with Verner Denvall, School of Social Work at Lund University, and Kettil Nordensjö, Department of Social Work at Malmö University, I work on a project concerning structured tools for inquiry within the field of financial assistance. One report on this subject has been published and three scholarly articles have been submitted but have not yet been published.

Another research interest of mine is domestic violence and financial security. I was the project manager for a research project studying how women who suffer domestic violence manage their livelihood and personal finances. In the project, we also studied how the municipalities organised their social work directed towards women suffering domestic violence. Professor Kerstin Svensson at the School of Social Work in Lund and Senior Lecturer Marie Eriksson at the Department of Social Work at Linnaeus University also participated in this project. The project was funded by the Crime Victim Compensation and Support Authority, but is essentially completed. Three scholarly articles have been published and one textbook. An additional chapter in the book is scheduled for publication in 2020.

Jönköping County worked on a project involving the development of the local labour market policy and the administration of social assistance in five municipalities in Jönköping County. I am currently working on two publications, one report to be published at the beginning of 2020 and a scholarly article scheduled for publication later on.

Together with colleagues from several higher education institutions, we are currently setting up a knowledge environment where we intend to conduct research, education and collaboration with various actors within the field of financial assistance and local labour market policy, see https://kmaktiv.org.