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.
Alex Berg (alex.berg@uef.fi)
The current project that I am working on currently at the UEF Law School addresses the Legal Rights of Older Immigrants and Immigrants with Dementia in Finland.
The legal rights of older immigrants and immigrants with dementia have not been researched extensively globally. In Finland, the research in this area is scarce. It is important to study these groups of people as the numbers of older immigrants and immigrants with dementia is increasing in the country. The study aims at investigating their lived experiences and the obstacles they might face regarding their legal rights and access to justice, and whether they feel stigmatized in society because of their vulnerable situation. It is also necessary to find solutions and strategies that aim at improving their lives and welfare in the Finnish society. The study will primarily employ an empirical approach to investigate the firsthand experiences of these groups through conducting semi-structured qualitative interviews with them. The inputs and experiences of people dealing with these groups will be considered as well in the data collection process. From a legal perspective, the research will analyze the policies regarding access to justice for these two groups, such as the Elderly Care Act, the Non-Discrimination Act, and the Social Welfare Act. From a social perspective, the problem will be looked at from a social stigmatization standpoint. This is in the sense that belonging to one of the categories of being ‘immigrant’, ‘old’, and ‘ill’ can lead to stigmatization. This research addresses groups of immigrants who belong to at least two of these categories, hence what can be identified as ‘intersecting stigmas’, and potentially a reinforced experience of hindrances to access to justice.
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).
Andrew Agbaje (andrew.agbaje@uef.fi)
Prof. Agbaje is an award-winning physician and professor (associate) of clinical epidemiology and child health who currently investigates causal relationships of aerobic fitness, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, body composition, insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia, and metabolic syndrome with arterial, cardiac, liver, and kidney structure and function from childhood through young adulthood.
He discovered arterial stiffness as a novel risk factor for paediatric obesity and insulin resistance, identified adolescence as the critical time to interrupt fat mass-insulin resistance pathologic cycle, and demonstrated light-intensity physical activity as a highly effective antidote for reversing excessive fat deposit induced by childhood sedentariness. Recently, he discovered waist-to-height ratio as a specific surrogate for fat mass but not muscle mass that could replace BMI in assessing childhood obesity. Subsequently, he was interviewed LIVE on BBC World News TV to discuss the novel findings.
As of September/October 2023, two of Prof. Agbaje’s publications were placed in the Top 1% highly cited paper in the academic field of Clinical Medicine, while a third publication was placed in the Top 1% highly cited paper in the academic field of Biology & Biochemistry by Clarivate’s Web of Science.
He has a first authored paper in Nature Communications and was interviewed LIVE on BBC World Service Radio Newsday programme on 15th Dec 2023, BBC Radio Devon on 16th Jan 2024, and BBC World News LIVE TV programme on 14th March 2024. The University of Eastern Finland recently recorded a podcast interview of his latest findings as well as a video.
The Endocrine Society in US, recently recorded a podcast interview of his research and discussed his research in the prestigious Endocrine Magazine March 2024 edition. He was recently interviewed by the European Association for the Study of Obesity, a federation of 36 European countries’ professional associations.
His research has received extensive press coverage, with over 2,000 media mentions in 2022 and 2023 in outlets such as BBC, CNN, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, Mirror, BILD, Infobae, Yahoo Lifestyle, Yahoo Sport, US News & World report, DocCheck, MSN, WebMD, Medscape, The Conversation, Jerusalem Post, Helsingin Sanomat, etc, potentially reaching a global audience of more than 4.5 billion. The equivalent advertising value of these news articles is more than 30 million US dollars.
He is the principal investigator of the urFIT-child research group and has strong collaboration with world-renowned pediatricians, exercise physiologists, epidemiologists, and adult clinicians in Canada, US, UK, Germany, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, etc.
He has received several scientific excellence awards including the prestigious EASO-Novo Nordisk Foundation for New Investigator Award in Childhood Obesity with a 300,000 Danish Kroner (~40,000 euro) prize. Other awards are the American Heart Association’s Elizabeth Barrett-Connor Research Award in Epidemiology and Prevention (once), Jeremiah and Rose Stamler Research Award (twice), and Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award (thrice).
He co-authored an American Heart Association Scientific Statement on Environmental Exposures and Pediatric Cardiology, published in Circulation. He had a video discussion of the Scientific Statement. He was an invited guest speaker to the largest mother and child center in Canada – CHU Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital Center, Canada in March 2023 to speak on the determinants of carotid intima-media thickness and arterial stiffness in pediatrics.
He is an Honorary Research Fellow at the Children’s Health and Exercise Research Centre (CHERC), Department of Public Health and Sports Sciences, Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK.
He was recently appointed an Associate Editor in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle (JCSM). He serves on the editorial board of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (ATVB), and mentors early career editorial board members. He also serves on the editorial board of Pediatric Exercise Science journal.
He is an elected Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC) and an elected Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA). These titles of honour, symbol of excellence and lifetime achievement recognizes his significant contribution to cardiovascular field in Europe and America.
He is an expert advisor to the World Health Organization’s task force on preventing childhood obesity.
Primary email is andrew.agbaje@uef.fi
Secondary email is a.agbaje@exeter.ac.uk
Anna Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen (anna.maki-petaja-leinonen@uef.fi)
Anna Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen is Professor of Law and Ageing. Her research has focused on Elder Law combining jurisprudence (Civil Law and Social- and Medical Law) with social and medical sciences.
Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen received her PhD (law) from the University of Helsinki in 2003. The title of her thesis is “Legal Rights of People with Dementia”. Her second monograph (2013) deals with the legal possibilities to anticipate aging. In autumn 2017, she published a book “Basics of Elder Law” with Anja Karvonen-Kälkäjä.
Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen is involved in many research projects. She is sub-consortium PI in an international research project focusing on the specific issues concerning people who develop dementia or mild cognitive impairment while still working (MCI@work). She is also sub-consortium PI in national research project scrutinizing home-based palliative care of the elderly (MeRela). At the University of Eastern Finland, Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen leads the Neuro-Ethics and Law research team, which is part of the university’s multidisciplinary Neuroscience research community.
Mäki-Petäjä-Leinonen teaches Elder and Guardianship law and is a teacher in course “Social Law Clinic”. She is docent (adjunct professor) in Family law at the University of Helsinki and docent (adjunct professor) in Elder law at the University of Lapland.
Anndra Parviainen (anndra.parviainen@uef.fi)
Researcher in various research groups like cancer research (INEXCA), quinoa food innovation research (Clinical Research Nurse in Disruptive Green Project) and recently in COVID research group (Northern Periphery and Arctic Programme Covid-19 Response Umbrella Project). Issues related to precision medicine, personalized care, and the integration of genomics in nursing education are my main areas of interest and are also related to my dissertation.
Anne Sulkakoski (anne.sulkakoski@uef.fi)
Maintaining and developing the university’s key control systems, handing over keys and access rights to facilities, continuation applications and key returns.
Ordering of extra keys and any changes to existing locks also take care of the planning of new lock systems and locking.
Anne-Mari Souto (anne-mari.souto@uef.fi)
My expertise is in the sociology of education, career guidance and critical race and whiteness studies. Issues related to social differences and inequalities in education and career guidance are my main interests. I have researched young people’s educational choices and transitions, school drop-outs and career guidance in primary education. I have also focused on racism in different educational institutions and in relations between pupils/ students.
My teaching and research work is guided by the ambition to explore how guidance can promote to social justice and combat gendered, ethnicised and racialised segregation in education and the labour market. Besides my teaching and research work, I supervise doctoral theses.
Anneli Hujala (ritva.hujala@uef.fi)
I work as a researcher of management in the field health and social care. My research focuses on interactional dimensions of management (health management science, social psychology) in the context of integrated care. Cross-boundary collaboration of managers, professionals and clients are the core of our latest research projects.