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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.

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.

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).

 

Alessandro Indelicato (alessandro.indelicato@uef.fi)

Alessandro Indelicato received a bachelor’s degree in Statistics from the University of Bologna in 2016. Two years later, he obtained a master’s degree in Statistics, Economics, and Management. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. His doctoral thesis focused on immigration and national identity, both analysed with novel mathematical approaches. Currently, he is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria and is also on a visiting research stay at the School of Theology at the University of Eastern Finland until June 2025.

Azmeary Ferdoush (azmeary.ferdoush@uef.fi)

I am an Academy of Finland (AOF) postdoctoral researcher based at the Karelian Institute. My AOF project explores whether, why, and how the state creates a situation where refugees and asylum seekers are kept indeterminately waiting. It is geographically focused on the Rohingya refugees in the camps of Bangladesh and the asylum seekers residing in different reception centers in Finland.

At the Institute, my works engage with the university strategic program that focuses specifically on the profiling area of  “cultural encounters, mobilities and borders.” Broadly, I am interested in exploring the way man-made ideas of borders and bounded spaces affect human mobility and vice versa. As such, I specialize in the study of state, territory, borders, sovereignty, (non)citizenship, and migration. At the same time, I often remain critical regarding “importing” ready-made ideas from the Global North to the Global South in terms of both theory and methods. My scholarship thus sits at the intersection of political geography, critical geopolitics, decolonial praxis, and qualitative research methods.

You can find more about my research here.

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”.

Hille Janhonen-Abruquah (hille.janhonen-abruquah@uef.fi)

Main interest:

  • Home economics approach to everyday life, Families and global migration, Youth’s comprehensive learning environment.
  • Hands-on and interactive home economics hybrid learning & teaching.
  • Global responsibility in education, Culturally responsive education, Cultural sustainability.