A Lost Mitten and Other Stories
The project, Lost Mitten and Other Stories, examines a new sense of neighbour relations that transpires as a result of growing mobility. The project focuses on the ways in which these new neighbour relations or a sense of neighbourliness emerge from stories related to personal items of significance, and the way in which these stories are perceived. Lost Mitten and Other Stories is an interdisciplinary project that seeks collaboration between art and science. The project is carried out in eastern Finland.
The main concern of the project is to find out how the items of personal significance and the stories related to them help establish dialogue and, consequently, new kinds of mobile and cross-border neighbour relations and a sense of neighbourliness. Furthermore, the purpose is to explore how dialogic interaction helps promote, for example, the construction of cultural citizenship and create new, migrating, deterritorial cultural heritages. The items of personal significance as well as the stories relating to them are examined through a materialistic, cultural, linguistic, and narrative point of view and are, additionally, exhibited through artistic, interactive displays. The items of personal significance are understood as a poetic and political medium of various dialogues between past and present, between immigrants and natives, between different generations, between mobile and sedentary people.
The approach and the subject matter of the project are topical: immigration, different mobilities, the encounter of languages and cultures, and thereby, emerging new neighbour relations and a sense of neighbourliness. The multidisciplinary approach, combining different methods of science and art, enables new ways of examining the issue of neighbour relations and a sense of neighbourliness.
The project combines science and art innovatively and, therefore, generates new methods to investigate the current issues of different mobilities, language and cultural encounters, and challenges arising from new neighbour relations.
The project is funded by the Kone Foundation.
A New Agenda for Nurse Educator Education in Europe
A Practical Grammar of the Russian Language
Ageing and elder care research group
The ageing and elder care research group is a multidisciplinary research group (incl. social gerontology, gerontological social work, health and social management, organization sciences), which addresses various elder care management and organizational issues and the wellbeing of older people from multi-agency perspectives. The effectiveness of services is also studied with different methodical approaches.
Ágnes Németh (agnes.nemeth@uef.fi)
Her doctoral thesis dealt with issues of regional policy, relational-governance and mega-events planning. She has been involved in European research projects (European Science Foundation, FP7) in border studies focusing on cross-border cooperation processes and the social (de)construction of borders. In her post-doctoral research, she studies foreigners’ socio-economic engagement in different Finnish urban environments with the aim of producing knowledge on the local particularities and challenges of integration processes. She is managing the international project “ECoC-SME: Actions for inducing SME growth and innovation via the ECoC event and legacy” (Interreg Europe, 2019-2021).
Aija Lulle (aija.lulle@uef.fi)
I am a migration scholar and geographer, currently working on a project Returning home? Making and imagining ageing futures. This research examines the lives of ageing people in the historical context of recent large-scale emigration and the unprecedented acceleration of population ageing in Eastern Europe. Its rationale originates from an urgent necessity to understand the wellbeing needs of ageing people. The theoretical approach is grounded in concepts from human geography and migration theory, focusing on migrants’ capabilities to aspire. The project utilises sensory, practical and imaginative homemaking practices.
Prior to my current research post, I was Lecturer and Senior Lecturer at Loughborough University, UK. My experience includes intense teaching and diverse fieldwork in Baltics, Nordic countries, border regions with Russia and the UK. In addition, I have significant leadership and administrative skills (as Director of the Diaspora and Migration Research Centre in Latvia (2014-2015) and as head of Doctoral Programmes in Geography and Environment in Loughborough (2021-2022).
Albert Mills (albert.mills@uef.fi)
Albert’s research interests include gender discrimination at work; intersectionality and diversity management; management history; and existentialism and management theory. He is the author and editor of over 150 scholarly articles; 100 book chapters and 50 books. He is the co-developer of Critical Sensemaking and ANTi-History and played an important role in the development of the field of gender and organizational theory. Albert is currently the Co-Chair of the international Critical Management Studies organization and has previously served as President of the Atlantic Schools of Business; President of the Administrative Sciences Association of Canada; Divisional Co-Chair of the Critical Management Studies division of the Academy of Management; and board member of the International Federation of Scholarly Associations of Management and of the Standing Conference on Organizational Symbolism. He is the Co-editor of the international journal Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management and serves on the editorial board of several leading journals. He has supervised 30 plus doctoral students in Canada and Finland. Albert’s association with Finland began in 1996 when he co-taught an international course on gender, culture and management at Lappeenranta University; taught doctoral courses at Hanken University and at the UEF since 2011. He has also been involved in several Canadian and Finnish-funded research to the tune of CAN$12 million.
Alessandro Indelicato (alessandro.indelicato@uef.fi)
Alessandro Indelicato received a bachelor’s degree in Statistics from the University of Bologna in 2016. Two years later, he obtained a master’s degree in Statistics, Economics, and Management. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. His doctoral thesis focused on immigration and national identity, both analysed with novel mathematical approaches. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and is also on a visiting research stay at the School of Theology at the University of Eastern Finland until June 2025. He is co-leading a WG of the COST ACTION CA20107 – CONNECTING THEORY AND PRACTICAL ISSUES OF MIGRATION AND RELIGIOUS DIVERSITY.
Alexandra Simon (alexandra.simon-lopez@uef.fi)
My primary fields of research are transculturality, imagology, German writers abroad, German film and television, the European Avant-Garde, and the Apocalypse in cultural productions. I teach all areas of German language and culture courses, including text workshops, oral communication, literature and culture courses, media and business German courses.
I am Docent in Multicultural Literature and Media Studies (University of Turku), and I hold a PhD in Comparative Literature (University of Eastern Finland). My professional career and multilingual and intercultural research projects are grounded in my enthusiasm and personal life, as I have lived and worked in several European countries over the past 20 years. I studied in Germany (Düsseldorf), Spain (Salamanca) and France (Nice), worked as a lecturer in France (Nantes) and the United Kingdom (Cambridge).