Africa-EU relations, migration, development and integration
The Africa-EU relations, migration, development and integration (AEMDI) project, aims to bring into conversation leading academics, policy makers, political observers and practitioners from civil society to explore and examine intra-Africa migration on one hand and EU-Africa relationships vis-à-vis migration on the other hand. Efforts to integrate Africa, through the RECs, should, then, be informed by lessons and parallels drawn from across Africa, and chiefly, the integration experience of the EU—particularly the Schengen Area—in moving from free movement of labour (only) to EU citizenship, as enshrined in Article 20 (1) of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. Its main activities of AEMDI will include two international workshops and one international conference. One workshop will be hosted by the University of Eastern Finland and another by the Centre for the Study of Governance Innovation (GovInn) at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. The main output of AEMDI activities will be a scientific edited volume, based on deliberations in and papers from the workshops. The main outcome of AEMDI is the promotion of the Jean Monnet Programme and adoption of best practices from the EU`s successes in regional integration, in Africa. The impacts of AEMDI will include increased networking and expertise between/of academics, policy makers, professionals and relevant stakeholders in Africa and the EU. AEMDI responds to the need to promote development and well-being in Africa through, among other things, learned experiences from observed successes in EU integration.
Aleksi Heinilä ([email protected])
Aleksi Heinilä works as Senior Lecturer in Environmental Law at UEF Law School. He defended his dissertation on planning and building law in 2017. He has extensive experience in Finnish environmental administration as an environmental law specialist. Currently, he works in a consortium “Collaborative remedies for fragmented societies” (CORE) funded by Strategic Research Council (Academy of Finland), as well as in the Academy of Finland -funded research project Transforming anatomies of democratic planning: Combining planning-theoretical and legal perspectives on flexible regulation in Finnish land use law (TRANAPLAN).
Alex Berg ([email protected])
Alex Berg, M.Sc (cand.soc) works as a Doctoral Researcher in Welfare Law (UEF Law School). His PhD dissertation tackles the legal rights and access to justice for older immigrants in Finland. The empirical research employs semi-structured interviews with older immigrants and professionals who offer services to them. The research aims to investigate the challenges that older immigrants face when they seek care and support services, the impact of stigmas on their lived experiences, and their access to justice from a broad socio-legal perspective.
Alex’s research interests focus on human rights, the rights of vulnerable people, and equality. He studied the effects of laws and social habitus on the vulnerable people’s lives and wellbeing. Some of his previous qualitative research involved refugees, stateless people, and victims of female genital mutilation.
Aleya Siddika ([email protected])
Aleya Nur Mohol Siddika is a doctoral researcher conducting her PhD research within the INTEL project (The Coming of Age of a New Legal Discipline: Developing the General Doctrine of Energy Law) at the Law School, University of Eastern Finland. Her research focuses on developing a general doctrine of energy law using NLP, network analysis, and doctrinal research on legal concepts and principles.
She holds an M.Sc. in Software Engineering and Information Systems from the University of Oulu and a B.Sc. in Software Engineering from the American International University-Bangladesh. She has experience in software development, AI-based analytics, and microservice architecture.
Aleya has published research in ICACIn 2024 and OuluREPO. She has worked in various tech companies in roles such as Tech Lead, Backend Engineer, and Software Engineer. Her expertise includes AI Analytics, Machine Learning, NLP, Python, and Software Architecture.
She has also earned multiple certifications and has experience in teaching and volunteering.
Anna-Maija Tolppanen ([email protected])
I have multidisciplinary background (MSc in bioinformatics, PhD in genetic epidemiology and >15 years’ experience in different fields and application areas of epidemiology since completing my PhD. My current research focusses on pharmacoepidemiology and clinical epidemiology.
The overarching aim of my research is to develop and implement methods and approaches for evaluating effectiveness and safety of treatments by using real-world data. The applied data ranges from national register-based studies to multi- and single-center studies using data from electronic medical records and medical reports as well as data collected specifically for research purposes.
My group has produced internationally recognized real-world evidence on utilisation and outcomes of different treatments, compared and validated different patient-reported outcome measurements and determined clinically important threshold values for them, and evaluated health inequalities in neurodegenerative disorders.
My research has been funded by e.g Academy of Finland research fellowship, 3x grants from Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research, work package leadership in Horizon-EU funded project Real4Reg https://www.real4reg.eu/ coordinated by the German Medicines Agency.
Annalisa Savaresi ([email protected])
Annalisa Savaresi is an environmental lawyer with 20 years of experience working with international, regional, and national governmental and non-governmental organizations. She earned her PhD from the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen in 2013 and has since held academic positions at the University of Edinburgh (2012-2016) and the University of Stirling, where she continues to hold a part-time chair.
Her academic portfolio includes over 50 peer-reviewed articles and contributions to renowned collections, such as Nature and the Max Planck Encyclopaedia of Public International Law, which have been widely cited, including by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She has held visiting posts at the University of Bologna, the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies (Italy), and the University of La Sabina (Colombia). At the University of Eastern Finland (UEF), Annalisa directs the Joint Nordic Master Programme in Environmental Law and oversees the Center for Climate Change, Energy and Environmental Law’s contributions to the Horizon Europe project RETOOL and the Jean Monnet network, Green Deal Net.
Annalisa serves as the Director for Europe within the Global Network on Human Rights and the Environment and has been a member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law since 2009.
She has provided expert evidence to legislative bodies such as the UK, EU, and Scottish Parliaments and currently sits on the Board of Environmental Standards Scotland, established under the UK Withdrawal from the European Union (Continuity) (Scotland) Act 2021, overseeing public authorities’ compliance with environmental law in Scotland.
Anne Tarvainen ([email protected])
I am an ethnomusicologist (PhD), and my research focuses on the embodied, experiential, and cultural dimensions of the human voice. Currently, I work as a senior researcher at the University of Eastern Finland on the “SOMECO – Sonic Mediations and Ecocritical Listening” project, funded by the Research Council of Finland. In my previous research, I have explored topics such as singers’ vocal expression and its embodied listening, somaesthetic experiences of d/Deaf, tone-deaf, and vocally disordered singers, as well as human voice and background music in service industry workplaces. I have also worked at Tampere University and been a visiting researcher at Florida Atlantic University and the University of Helsinki. I share my expertise by teaching writing skills, and by providing training in the Voicefulness® method I have developed. More information and my publications can be found on my website: www.annetarvainen.fi.
Anne Väisänen ([email protected])
In my doctoral research, I explore the prosodic features of deceptive speech, beliefs about cues to deception, and lie detection. The primary research material consists of emergency call recordings, with a specific focus on the acoustic-prosodic features of hoax emergency calls. My research interests extend broadly to speech prosody and the impressions it creates, but I am also interested in vocal health, voice training methods, and research on these topics. I did my Master’s degree in the University of Tampere, majoring in speech technique and vocology.
My teaching experience includes instructing a wide range of speech research methods in general linguistics at the University of Eastern Finland, particularly focusing on the Praat software and evaluating voice by utilizing acoustic measurements.
Anniina Kämäräinen ([email protected])
I work as a university lecturer in the field of Special Education. The subjects I teach include autism spectrum themes, mathematics learning, mathematical learning difficulties, and qualitative research methods. Additionally, I supervise master’s theses, doctoral dissertations, and teaching practicums.
My research focuses on the construction of social interaction in inclusive environments and the school, educational, and work-life experiences of autistic adults. My expertise in research methods includes qualitative approaches such as multimodal conversation analysis, discourse analysis, and content analysis.