Sara Liinamo

I work as a doctoral researcher in social psychology at the Department of Social Sciences. In my PhD research, now in its final stages, I examine how personality tests shape understandings of subjecthood and how test respondents negotiate these assumptions while making sense of themselves within tests. I have generated data in which research participants “think aloud” as they interpret test questions and decide how to answer them. Drawing on critical discursive psychology and intersectional theory, I study how test respondents’ intersectional social positions shape their possibilities for engaging with the tests and how test respondents use identity categories associated with these social positions as resources when describing themselves in the tests.

In April 2026, I will begin as a grant-funded researcher in the interdisciplinary, three-year #THRIVE project at the University of Helsinki. In collaboration with researchers in law and gender studies, we examine the impact of the #MeToo movement on the legal and social recognition of workplace sexual and gender-based harassment in Finland, using court judgements and trial documents as empirical data.