There are similar regional centres funded by the International Association of Schools of Social Work RRCs in other regions of the world such as China, Oceania and Eastern Africa. Our network of university partners is committed to exchange and communication across participating countries for the promotion of global social work education (including fieldwork) and the recognition of best examples of innovative and transformative social work research and practice.
We seek to create new opportunities for active partnership in teaching and research on the contemporary issues such as sustainability, diversity, inequality, migration and promote the regional professional profile of social work education and research. The centre is coordinated by the Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Germany and University of Eastern Finland, Finland, higher education institutions with a longstanding commitment to global social work education and scholarship. The current coordinators of this centre are Professors Chaitali Das, (FUAS), Janet Carter Anand (UEF).
Jari Martikainen (jari.martikainen@uef.fi)
I work as a University Lecturer in Social Psychology at the University of Eastern Finland. My interdisciplinary research focuses on the theory of social representations, visual and social representations of teachership and leadership, migration politics, populist communication as well as visual, multimodal and arts-based research methods.
Joni Virkkunen (joni.virkkunen@uef.fi)
I work as Research Manager at the Karelian Institute. As the Director of the VERA Centre for Russian and Border Studies, I am also executive board member of the UEF’s top-level research area Borders, Mobilities and Cultural Encounters (BOMOCULT) and of the cross-faculty Doctoral Programme in Social and Cultural Encounters. My research relates to borders, border governance, cross-border cooperation, EU-Russian relations and transnational migration in Russian and post-Soviet contexts. I have been recently studying, for example, at the Northern Dimension policy and the regional impacts of EU-Russia relations, and 2015-2016 Arctic migration route through/from Russia to Finland. The latter I have been studying through Finnish and Russian migration and border policies, publicity and public debates of the migration / migration route, migrants’ everyday insecurities, and informal practices such as corruption and criminality.
Jussi Laine (jussi.laine@uef.fi)
Dr Jussi P. Laine is a professor of multidisciplinary border studies at the Karelian Institute of the University of Eastern Finland, holding the title of Docent of Human Geography at the University of Oulu, Finland. He is the President of the World Social Science Association and currently serves on the Steering Committee of the International Geographical Union’s Commission on Political Geography. From 2013 to 2021 he led the Association for Borderlands Studies, the leading international scholarly association dedicated exclusively to the systematic interchange of ideas and information relating to international border areas. By background Dr Laine is a human geographer, yet in his approach to borders he combines influences from international relations and geopolitics, political sociology, history, anthropology, and psychology. Within border studies he seeks to explore the multiscalar production of borders and bring a critical perspective to bear on the relationship between state, territory, citizenship, and identity construction. Most recently, Dr Laine has published works on border mobility, migration, the ethics of borders and ontological (in)security.
MATILDE – Migration Impact Assessment to Enhance Integration and Local Development in European Rural and Mountain Areas
The EU-funded MATILDE project is based on the hypothesis that non-EU immigrants represent a challenge for rural and mountain areas in Europe. However, these third-country nationals (TCNs) could contribute to the local economic and social development. In addition, TCNs affect the relationship between urban areas and rural and mountain zones. As a result, the project will estimate the dimensions of the economic and social impacts of TCNs on European, national and local levels. The project intends to engage local stakeholders and elaborate proposals concerning the redistribution of resources in the EU rural and mountain areas as well as recommendations concerning government policies. The project will offer policymakers and stakeholders a better understanding of the migrant integration process.
Meysam Haddadi Barzoki (meysamh@uef.fi)
Dr Barzoki currently foucese on the sexual objectification among Muslim immigrant women in Europe as a vulnerable group who suffer from serious psychological trauma raises from difficult time of immigration and resettlement in Europe.
Migration and Transnational Everyday Life in Finnish-Russian Border Area at Era of Austerity
This project is on-going ethnographic research of migrants in North Karelia. Since the beginning of the 2000s, I have been carrying on my research among Russian migrants from the everyday ethnographic perspective, in the border areas of North Karelia. The theoretical framework of the project lies in the intersection of welfare politics, transnational everyday life, rural border areas and everyday geopolitics (see e.g. Pöllänen & Davydova-Minguet 2017). Methodologically the study continues the border ethnography tradition (Davydova & Pöllänen 2010, 2011; Vila 2003). This project conducts research on migration and transnationalism in the contexts of border areas in the era of austerity policy and politics.
Natalie Joubert (natalie.joubert@uef.fi)
Natalie Joubert is currently a Welfare, Health and Management (WELMA) doctoral student at the University of Eastern Finland, Kuopio. She is a professionally qualified social worker who completed the Nordic Master in Social Work and Welfare in 2019. Her interest is in cultural diversity, parenting practices, the mental health and well-being of children in migrant families and social inclusion in Scandinavia and Europe.
Publications
- Joubert, Natalie, Anand, Janet Carter and Mäki-Opas, Tomi, (2020), Migration as a Challenge to the Sustainability of Nordic Gender Equality Policies as Highlighted through the Lived Experiences of Eritrean Mothers Living in Denmark, Sustainability, 12, issue 23. Impact Factor – 2.567
- Joubert, Natalie Lynette. “Parenting in a New Context–Eritrean Parents Living in Denmark.”ERIS Journal–Winter 2021–Forced Migration and Minority Groups (2021): 36.
- Farahani, Hadi, Natalie Joubert, Janet C. Anand, Timo Toikko, and Mohamad Tavakol. (2021). “A Systematic Review of the Protective and Risk Factors Influencing the Mental Health of Forced Migrants: Implications for Sustainable Intercultural Mental Health Practice” Social Sciences 10, no. 9: 334
Non-Western Migration Regimes in a Global Perspective MARS
Pirjo Pöllänen (pirjo.pollanen@uef.fi)
Research topics are the hollowing out of Finnish welfare state, migration and rural areas.