Alexander Osipov is a postdoctoral fellow at the Karelian Institute, the University of Eastern Finland. He received his diploma in history (2002) and Candidate of Sciences degree (2006) from Petrozavodsk State University, Russia. He completed his PhD at the University of Eastern Finland in 2022.
His research interests include the Russian Civil War, post-Soviet decolonization, and environmental history. His current research project explores the strategies of the Karelian national movement (1917–1922) and the political uses of history, with particular emphasis on the instrumentalization of military history in contemporary Russia.
Aleksei Afonin ([email protected])
My research interest is the use OMICs methods in neurobiology and mental health
Aleksi Knaappila ([email protected])
I work on my PhD project exploring boreal forest fires in Finland. Specifically, I focus on the factors affecting ignition, and on the variation of flammability across time and space. My research integrates official wildfire statistics, remote sensing data, and national vegetation inventories.
Alex Berg ([email protected])
Alex Berg, M.Sc (cand.soc) works as a Doctoral Researcher in Welfare Law (UEF Law School). His PhD dissertation tackles the legal rights and access to justice for older immigrants and immigrants living with dementia in Finland. The empirical research employs semi-structured interviews with older immigrants and professionals who offer services to them. The research aims to investigate access to justice barriers for older immigrants and immigrants with dementia, as well as their experiences of social exclusion.
Alex’s research interests focus on human rights, the rights of vulnerable people, and equality. He studied the effects of laws and social habitus on the vulnerable people’s lives and wellbeing. Some of his previous qualitative research involved refugees, stateless people, and victims of female genital mutilation.
Alexander Diener ([email protected])
Alexander Diener is Professor of Critical Border Studies at the Karelian Institute of University of Eastern Finland. His research focuses on borders/borderlands, migration and diaspora, nationalism/transnationalism, rural development, urban landscape change, and human territorialization/place attachment. He is the author of the Homeland Conceptions and Ethnic Integration Amongst Kazakhstan’s Germans and Koreans (Mellon Press 2004) and One Homeland or Two: The Nationalization and Transnationalization of Mongolia’s Kazakhs (Stanford University Press 2009), and co-author of Borders: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press 2012/2024). Professor Diener has also co-edited the books Borderlines and Borderlands: Political Oddities at the Edge of the Nation State (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2010), From Socialist to Post-Socialist Cities: Cultural Politics of Architecture, Urban Planning, and Identity in Eurasia (Routledge Publishers 2014), Cities as Power: Urban Space, Place, and National Identity (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2019), and The Power of Place in Place Attachment (Routledge Publishers 2023). Through his career, Professor Diener has been awarded fellowships that include the Regional Research Fulbright Scholar for Central Asia, a three-time Fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Center’s Kennan Institute, a Senior Fellow at George Washington University’s Elliott School, the American University of Central Asia, the Mongolian National University, Indiana University, the University of Iowa, Harvard University’s Davis Center, and the University of Connecticut’s Humanities Research Center. His work has been supported by grants from the Social Science Research Council, the International Research and Exchange Board, the American Geographical Society, the Association of American Geographers, the American Center for Mongolian Studies, the National Science Foundation, Council for American Overseas Research Centers, American Councils for International Education, Central Asian Research Network, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Smithsonian Institute. Alex is currently the Managing Editor of the international publishing platform Oxford Intersections Borders. A native of the upstate New York, Diener holds graduate degrees from the University of Chicago, from the University of South Carolina, and the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Alexandra Huhta ([email protected])
I work as a Project Researcher at the Research Center for Sustainable Circular Economy (UEF CECE) and the Sustainable Innovation Lab (SUNLAB).
My responsibilities include conducting market research on circular economy–related training provision and developing marketing strategies for circular economy microcredentials offered by the Continuous Learning Center (CLIC). As part of the CE4ALL (Circular Economy Skill Development for Working Life) project, I also design customer and user profiles using service design methodologies.
I also contribute to communication and digital content development, promote the visibility of researchers and their work, and participate in organising research group activities related to innovation management and sustainability.
Furthermore, I work as a research and teaching assistant within SUNLAB and the Innovation Management team.
Alexandra Simon ([email protected])
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).
Aleya Siddika ([email protected])
Aleya Nur Mohol Siddika is a doctoral researcher conducting her PhD research within the INTEL project (The Coming of Age of a New Legal Discipline: Developing the General Doctrine of Energy Law) at the Law School, University of Eastern Finland. Her research focuses on developing a general doctrine of energy law using NLP, network analysis, and doctrinal research on legal concepts and principles.
She holds an M.Sc. in Software Engineering and Information Systems from the University of Oulu and a B.Sc. in Software Engineering from the American International University-Bangladesh. She has experience in software development, AI-based analytics, and microservice architecture.
Aleya has published research in ICACIn 2024 and OuluREPO. She has worked in various tech companies in roles such as Tech Lead, Backend Engineer, and Software Engineer. Her expertise includes AI Analytics, Machine Learning, NLP, Python, and Software Architecture.
She has also earned multiple certifications and has experience in teaching and volunteering.
Algoa Progress
ALGOA PROGRESS is a “New Business from Research Ideas” (TUTLI) project funded by Business Finland and the European Regional Development Fund. The project aims to explore the commercial potential of an algorithm that can predict the progression of osteoarthritis. The project seeks to lay both technological and commercial foundations for a novel technology that allows individualized treatment planning for people with, e.g. osteoarthritis. The objective of this type of treatment planning would be to prevent osteoarthritis or to slow down its progression.
The project is based on long-term basic and applied research carried out by the Biophysics of Bone and Cartilage research group (http://luotain.uef.fi/) at the Department of Applied Physics, UEF, as well as on utilising these research findings in computational modelling.
Alina Inkinen ([email protected])
I work as a project researcher in the School Well-being, Learning Support, and Teacher Segregation Project (KOTOPE). In this project, my research focuses on the appearnce of school segregation from the perspective of teachers across different regions of Finland and various types of schools. Additionally, I examine teachers’ educational pathways and their placement in the profession, as well as issues related to segregation as part of these.
My other research interests include higher education policy, especially politics of transitions that are related to access to higher education from both political documents and applicants’ perspectives.