Sara Liinamo

In my dissertation, I investigate how people engage with personality tests, focusing on their interpretations, responses, and positioning in relation to the test. I have produced data in which research participants “think aloud” as they interpret test questions and decide how to respond to them. My analysis focuses on participants’ identity work: how they position themselves in relation to the test, and how their intersectional social positions shape their possibilities for engaging with the questions and the implicit assumptions about personhood embedded in them. More broadly, I am interested in how personality tests construct normative understandings of personhood, and how these constructions contribute to the (re)production of intersectional inequalities.

Theoretically and methodologically, I am interested in critical discursive psychology, intersectional theory, social constructionism, sociology of knowledge, and science and technology studies. My research interests include psychologisation of society and culture, technologies of self, equality in working life and qualitative research of survey data.

During the academic year 2025–2026, I will work as the responsible teacher for the advanced-level Social Psychology course Guidance and Counselling (in Finnish), as the examiner for The Social Construction of Meanings and Images (in Finnish), and as the instructor for Cultural Diversity in Interpersonal Work (in Finnish). I will also organise a reading group on Psychologised Working Life (in Finnish), aimed at researchers and final-stage students from different universities who share an interest in this topic.

I am happy to be contacted about any of the above-mentioned topics.