Lars Bo Andersen

Research and development areas

I am a researcher of children, (digital) technology and education for social change.

My research interests generally/currently fall within four categories – but also often outside these:

1. Agency and empowerment of children in relation to digital technologies. This is properly the defining interest for my research. It grew from a frustration with the widespread belief in children as ‘digital natives’ and the idea that technologies - in themselves - can empower against social, economic or political inequality. But it is (nonetheless) also based on an optimistic belief in the empowering potential of technologies for children.
2. Educating (cyborg) children. Most of my current research is on technology education in relation to both teacher education and K-9 education. My main interest is how to educate children in relation to the technologies ways that emphasize technologies as ‘hybrid’ or socio-technical phenomena that are already very much present in the everyday life of these children. I primarily conduct this research in relation to the Danish subject area ‘technology comprehension’ (teknologiforståelse).
3. Technological sustainability in the Anthropocene. In continuation from the above, I try to conduct research on how to educate children on digital technologies as having ‘earthly existence’  and ‘earthly consequences’ both in their own life and in the world at large. For instance, how can primary education help children to grasp how technologies are part of ecosystems of minerals and metals, humans and labor, business models and revenue streams, and massive amounts of energy and heat generation.
4. The relationship between science, society and technologies. I have great affection for Science and Technology Studies (STS) and Donna Haraway's Situated Knowledge is stuck on repeat inside my head. This implicates an interest in researching the real-world empirical existence of concepts such as objectivity, technology, science, etc., and what such real-world existence implicates and affords (and for who).

You can find more here: ORCID - Google Scholar - My own research webpage

Competences

• • I head the research program Digitization in Schools at University College Copenhagen – follow us here: https://www.linkedin.com/company/digitalisering-i-skolen
  • I co-head the National Knowledge Centre on Technology Comprehension – follow us here: https://tekforstaa.dk/
  • I Chair of the Danish Association of Science and Technology Studies (DASTS) – follow us here: https://www.dasts.dk/

  Employments

  2022 -          Docent (senior associate professor), UCC

  2019-2022   Lead consultant, UCC

  2017-2019   Research developer, AU, UC Syd and PHA

  2014-2017   Postdoc, AU

  2009-2013   PhD Student, AU

  (Prior misc...)

  Education

  Media training for researchers (2023 at Information), teacher training for university teachers (2015 at Aarhus University)

  2014 - PhD on (educational) technology in international development (www.laptopstudy.net)

  2009 - Master of science in information studies and visual culture (cand.it.)

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