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
Anu Lainio (anu.lainio@uef.fi)
I am a postdoctoral researcher in the research project ‘Breadline Utopias: Alternative Futures of Material Assistance,’ funded by the Kone Foundation. We explore utopias of those working in food assistance now and in the future, as well as those who need food aid.
I earned my Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2024 from the University of Surrey in the field of sociology of education. My doctoral research was part of the ERC-funded Eurostudents project, which explored constructions of contemporary higher education students by various social actors across six European countries. In my thesis, ‘Discursive Politics of Studentship: Representation of Higher Education Students in the News Media Across Europe,’ I examined and compared constructions of students in newspapers in Denmark, England, Germany, Ireland, Poland, and Spain.
My research interests encompass a wide range of higher education-related themes, including student identities and discursive practices of identity formation, marketisation of higher education, educational inequalities, media studies, and cross-national and international higher education research. Currently, my research focuses on utopian theories and methods, students’ utopias of food assistance, as well as the political imagination and agency of students in a changing welfare society.
Anushree Luukela-Tandon (anushree.luukela-tandon@uef.fi)
I am a Senior Researcher (Innovations and Markets in Bioeconomy) at the Business School, Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies, University of Eastern Finland.
I am keenly interested in examining how technological platforms, particularly social media, intersect with consumers’ lives. I am fascinated by the depth of impact that these platforms have had on facilitating consumers’ awareness of and behavior towards sustainable products. To this end, my research focuses on developing a nuanced understanding of how and why consumers make decisions regarding consumption of sustainable products and services, and what role technology could play in facilitating a more positive consumer outlook towards the same. Additionally, I am intrigued by the ‘dark side of social media’, or the negative effects that social media platforms have had on individual lives and passionate about examining the implications of contemporary issues like fear of missing out, on social media users.
My research has been published in leading journals like the Journal of Business Research, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Computers in Human Behavior, Internet Research and Information and Software Technology, to name a few.
Aytaç Yürükçü (aytac.yurukcu@uef.fi)
KM-19-11076 Finnish Government Scholarship Pool, EDUFI, “First Encounter of Two Nations in Balkans in the History of Relations between Finland and Turkey; Finnish Soldiers and War Reports During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78”.
TM-21-11709 / Finnish Government Scholarship Pool, EDUFI, “War Propaganda and the Role of Media in Comparative Perspective: Analysing the Media Sources of the Russo-Turkish War 1877-78”.
My research interests include journalism, media, press, war correspondence, diaries and reminiscences late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Also my research area specialises in identity and nationalism, historical image studies, intellectual history, cultural history, mapping and cartography. Currently, I am a reviewer for International Journal of Cartography ICACI/IJC and I am in the Editorial Board of The World History Bulletin (2020/2022), an official publication of the World History Association.
Denis Dobrynin (denis.dobrynin@uef.fi)
I am coordinating the activities implemented by the University of Eastern Finland within the framework of the EDUCase platform. Supported by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, the EDUCase platform is focused on strengthening partnerships in education, sustainable development and global responsibility. In 2022, we organize courses on environmental collaboration and conflict resolution in Finland and in Tanzania. These courses address conflicts related to natural resources management, including the examination of theoretical frameworks and conflict cases, hands-on exercises and the development of collaboration, mediation and consensus-building skills. The courses are both academic and practice-driven.
As a researcher, I am interested in environmental and forest policy and governance, sustainability, and bioeconomy. In my research, I am focused on the role of globalization and privatization of forest governance and sustainable forest management, including the market-driven forest certification, NGOs and private companies. My research was supported by the Kone Foundation and the Department of Geographical and Historical Studies.
Dominique van de Klundert (dominique.van@uef.fi)
Dominique van de Klundert is a visiting postdoctoral researcher from Aotearoa New Zealand, working between UEF and the University of Rijeka courtesy of the YUFE programme. Her doctoral research developed a media archaeology-informed ‘stereographic’ methodology for de/colonising visual heritage research, combining 3D photographic imaging with the Latin American personal-political oral history narrative form of testimonio to simulate a conversation among residents of contested UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Bolivia and Palestine.
Other projects analysed the evidentiary status and heritage qualities of the documentary photographs of early Australian photographer J.W. Lindt and critically investigated the use of criminal death masks in the intersecting practice of phrenology and development of neuroscience at the University of Melbourne’s medical school. Having served as a travel and academic editor, she also supported innovative research dissemination in video format as a participant in the ‘Science & Startups’ programme of the Berlin University Alliance.
Her current project investigates the ways in which eco-discourse around designated international ‘dark sky’ communities combating light pollution in Europe and the UK suggests a resurgence of the notion of ‘planetary’ heritage integrated with more-than-human wellbeing.
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.
Hanna Varjakoski (hanna.varjakoski@uef.fi)
I currently work as a postdoctoral researcher in the HAIDI project at the University of Eastern Finland. My background is in the Humanities, and I received my PhD in Media Studies in the University of Turku, Finland. In my dissertation, I examined the Finnish media landscape of the 2000s and what it produces and challenges as regards cultural imageries and understandings of ageing, older individuals and later life. The study focused on analyzing age representations on social media, popular fiction film and selected TV-makeover shows with a gender sensitive approach.
My research interests are in the field of cultural gerontology, in particular, but I have also worked as a researcher e.g. in a project that examined older adults’ neighbour relations and age diversity in the neighborhood.
I teach in courses that address questions related to cultural ageing, media, digitalization and health.