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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.

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).

 

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.

Anna Rawlings (anna.rawlings@uef.fi)

In my research, I examine motivation, learning, and well-being in different learning environments and among learners of different ages. I am particularly interested in how temperament guides these phenomena, processes, and their interconnections. I have started working as a grant researcher at UEF in May 2023.

I am also coordinator of FinEd, or the Finnish Multidisciplinary Doctoral Training Network on Educational Sciences (2022–).

Annele Virtanen (annele.virtanen@uef.fi)

Head of the Aerosol Physics Research Group: http://www.uef.fi/aerosol/
I received my PhD in Tampere University of Technology (TUT, Department of Physics) 2004. After that I continued working as a postdoc and group leader at TUT. On January 2012 I moved to University of Eastern Finland (UEF) to lead the Aerosol Physics Laboratory. I have a strong background in measurement method development and applications related to atmospheric aerosols. My major research questions are related to the atmospheric aerosols: how they form, what are their properties and what is the role they play in the Earth’s climate through their interactions with water vapour. To study these questions in a comprehensive way I have established a wide international collaborative networks and consistently developed our own research infrastructure at UEF.
Major part of my research is funded by EU Framework program (e.g. project FORCeS, EUROCHAMP2020, ERC Starting Grant project QAPPA) and Academy of Finland.

Anupam Sen (anupam.sen@uef.fi)

I am a grant researcher in the University of Eastern Finland since January 2022 with a grant from Kone Foundation for my doctoral research.

My doctoral research is aimed at exploring disposability, otherness, marginality, waste and their intricate relation to humanity in the context of contemporary dystopian literature (fiction and film). The aim of my research is to understand on a global scale the obsessive re/production of redundant populations across the world in this age of neo-liberal globalization and examine their precarious conditions as represented in various dystopic narratives. My dissertation is supervised by Professor Jopi Nyman and Pekka Kilpeläinen.

As a part of my doctoral researcher position at UEF, I am also teaching a course at MA level students.

Brexit, migration and mobility

Brexit provides an excellent opportunity to examine how the formal (state) and informal (social) processes of border-making relate to each other and play out in the everyday life of those impacted by this historic change. As the transitionary period after UK’s exit from the EU ends in December 2020, it is important to discuss the impact of the Brexit process from a migrant perspective. The prolonged uncertainty has already had an impact on the lives of intra-European migrants at multiple levels: for their legal status and rights as residents, for their work opportunities and career prospects and for identity and the sense of belonging and feeling of social inclusion to their host societies – be they the UK for the Nordic migrants or any of the other EU countries for the Brits.

UEF is host to several research projects that focus on the impact of Brexit on intra-European migrants. Dr. Tiina Sotkasiira has interviewed Finns living in Scotland and England as a part of her research on Brexit and Finns in Britain and Dr. Saara Koikkalainen has collected data among Nordic nationals in London . Together with two colleagues, researcher Peter Holley and Dr. Nicol Savinetti, Dr. Koikkalainen has also conducted a survey among Brits living in Europe (n=752).

Dawid Bunikowski (dawid.bunikowski@uef.fi)

I am a legal philosopher of Polish descent, residing in Eastern Finland (North Karelia, Joensuu). I did my PhD in Poland in 2009 (on law and morality: abortion, euthanasia, human fertilisation, cloning, pornography, prostitution, same-sex couples, etc.). I did different postgraduate studies in: 1) human resources management, 2) economics, 3) MBA-sustainable and inclusive leadership, 4) Jews in Poland. I carried out my postdoctoral research at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF, School of Law), in 2013-2015 (on the recent global financial crisis as an axiological crisis: the crisis of law and the crisis of morality; business ethics/corporate governance). My Docent title was granted by the University of Lapland in 2022 (in the field of philosophy of law in the Arctic).

I have been a Visiting Researcher at the UEF School of Theology since 2020. Additionally, I am a University Professor at the State University of Applied Sciences in Wloclawek (Department of Administration) in Poland. I am a Lecturer at the University of Guyana (Department of Law) in Guyana. I am a former Visiting Professor at Carleton University (Department of Law and Legal Studies) in Ottawa, Canada.

I am a law and religion scholar. I work on state church relations, religious freedom, Catholicism and Judaism, but also on relations between law, morality and religion. My main research interests concern as well: law and morality, law and politics, law and society, law and anthropology, law and language, etc. Much of my research has covered indigenous cultures in the Arctic like customary laws, recognition of indigenous rights or protection of sacred sites. I am also to ethical foundations of economy.

Moreover, I do “all things Polish”.

While in the School, I teach:

I also taught here (2022/2023):

  • “Jews and Judaism in Poland, Russia, the Baltic countries and East Central Europe”,
  • “Ukrainian-Polish relations: history, politics, culture, law, religion”.

Moreover, while in social sciences (2023/2024), I am the coordinator of the YUFE course “Global Migration and European Identity” and have taught “Populism in East Central Europe”.

Dirk van Rens (dirk.van.rens@uef.fi)

My dissertation, supervised by Prof Jopi Nyman and Dr Anna-Leena Toivanen, focuses on the way contemporary Afro-Atlantic literature negotiates the traumas of slavery and its legacies.

As part of my position as grant-based researcher at UEF, I (guest) lecture in MA- and BA level courses, function as a teaching assistant, and co-evaluate MA theses.

Eetu Ahvo (eetu.ahvo@uef.fi)

I work as an early-stage researcher at the UEF Law School and as a grant researcher (Niilo Helander Foundation, 2020–2022). In my doctoral research, I focus on intermediary liability for user-generated content online. Since the European Union has an ambitious legislative project to create a digital single market, the regulation of the online services industry is also brought under further scrutiny.

My particular research interests center around intellectual property law (in particular copyright law), IT law, and data protection law.