Tobias Axelsson

About Tobias Axelsson

Tobias Axelsson holds a PhD in Gender Studies and is a Senior Lecturer in Social Studies. His research primarily focuses on feminist perspectives on fatherhood, fathers, and fathering, as well as gender equality and norm-critical perspectives on education.

Feminist Perspectives on Fatherhood, Fathers, and Fathering

Axelsson defended his doctoral thesis, When Men Meet as Fathers, in 2019 (in Swedish: 'När män möts som pappor'). It explores the phenomenon of open preschools for fathers, referred to as 'fathering spaces' in the thesis. The aim is to analyse how fathering is performed and how fathers are constituted through the separate organisation of men as fathers in fathering spaces in gender-equal and father-friendly Sweden. The thesis draws on observations of fathering spaces, interviews with fathers who participated in such settings, and public documents concerning parenting support.

Axelsson has also worked on theoretical and methodological development. The article "Gender Theory Approaches to Fathers’ Parental Leave Experiences of Primary Childcare" (Norma, 2025) examines the gender-theoretical approaches used in Nordic research on parental leave between 1992 and 2020. In a forthcoming book chapter, "Fathers as Men, Men as Fathers, or Men and Fathers as Parents?" (The Routledge Companion to Gender and Fatherhood, forthcoming in 2026 or 2027), Axelsson develops and discusses a typology focusing on different aspects of fathers’ parenthood: fathers’ power as men, men’s collective experiences of being fathers, and the possibilities available to men and fathers to be and act as parents beyond institutionalised binary gender and heteronormative orders.

Gender Equality and Norm-Critical Perspectives on Education

During 2018 and 2019, Axelsson worked in the research project Systematic Gender Equality and Quality Work in Preschools. One of the articles resulting from the project, "Norm-Critique as Revitalizer of Gender Equality?" (Nordic Journal of Studies in Educational Policy, 2023), examines possible unintended consequences of the growing influence of norm-critical perspectives on the Swedish preschool's gender equality mission.

More recently, Axelsson published an article that seeks to discuss and develop norm-critical pedagogy from a feminist critical realist perspectives. In "Why Norm-Critique?" (Critical Studies in Education, 2026), Axelsson argues that norm-critical perspectives on education risk taking the concept of norms for granted, that the concept of norms has come to function as a one-size-fits-all concept, and that the concept of norms is, paradoxically, both too simple and too complex.

Teaching

Axelsson previously taught Gender Studies (2008–2020) and Education (2018–2021). Since 2021, however, Axelsson has primarily taught Social Studies. He mainly teaches student teachers preparing to become upper secondary school teachers. This teaching covers, among other things, subject-specific didaktik and teaching practice, power and social stratification, case studies in the sociology of education, international relations using film as a pedagogical tool, global justice and sustainability, and supervision of independent research project/student essays. Axelsson also coordinates Social Studies courses for student teachers preparing to teach in primary and lower secondary education, and teaches courses specifically focusing on social studies.