I am a doctoral researcher in biblical studies. I research the metaphorical, mythological, cultural and religious associations of trees in the Bible and other early Jewish and Christian literature using large language models. As a researcher, I am interested in ecotheology, conceptual metaphor theoryartificial intelligence assisted data mining, and comparative mythology.
Markus Mättö ([email protected])
My research interest is in the area of corporate finance, financial accounting, and auditing.
Markus Sairanen ([email protected])
Mr. Markus Sairanen is a doctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland’s Centre for Climate Change, Energy and Environmental Law. His doctoral research focuses on the interaction between EU law and EU policies for accelerating the energy transition. He holds an LLM in environmental and climate change law and a BA in history from the University of Eastern Finland. Outside academia, he has advised companies in the energy sector on cross-border projects and transactions.
Marta Choroszewicz ([email protected])
I am Marta Choroszewicz (DSocSci, the title of docent in sociology) and I work at the Department of Sociology at the University of Eastern Finland. My work as a sociologist concentrates on the intersection between research on professional work, feminist theories, and science and technology studies. In my research, I have broadly investigated social inequalities in the professions, organizations and working life in general. More recently, I have studied development and implementation of data-driven practices and technologies in the Finnish health care and social services, public sector (AI) innovation and engaged with the issues of building a digital welfare state via the use of new data technologies such as automated decision-making systems. Besides my own research projects, I worked in ProPSI, DaDSoc, DataLit and DEQUAL projects.
In 2024-2025, I work on a personal grant received from the Finnish Cultural Foundation for my project “Perpetual Piloting and Invisible Work of Automating Public Services in Finland”, in which I study Artificial Intelligence (AI) based innovation processes and (in)visible work associated with them in Finnish public administration. As a part of this project, I am also tackling the meaning of ‘social sustainability’ in the context of digitalizing welfare state. The research data I collected over two years is a unique and extensive ethnographic data set of innovation activities (100+ interviews and 400+ hours of observation) across public administration sectors from two public administration organisations. The data covers various stages of design, development and experimentation of AI tools, including decision support tools, AI assistants, Microsoft 365 Copilot and predictive algorithm systems.
In 2026-2027, I will be working as a grant researcher on my project “Navigating experimental AI tools within technology-enthusiastic context of Finnish public administration” funded by the North Karelia Regional Fund (Eini ja Jorma Veikkolainen Fund) and the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation on the impact of increasing uptake of experimental AI tools and systems on the public servants’ work and expertise as well as the Finnish public administration more broadly. The project is based on extensive ethnographic data to ensure a long-term perspective on ongoing – and accelerated by AI tools – digital transformation of Finnish public administration.
SocioCast episode on my research available at:
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4xD3xZ0gRIcPg37jGYloVB?si=260c321758144368
SoundCloud: https://soundcloud.com/sociocast-uef/generative-ai-tools-in-the-public-sector-in-finland
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/marta-choroszewicz-generative-ai-tools-in-the-public/id1665562756?i=1000790347084
Press releases about my research:
Researchers develop new model for ethical AI governance: https://www.kul.pl/researchers-develop-new-model-for-ethical-ai-governance,art_114343.html https://www.uef.fi/en/article/researchers-develop-new-model-for-ethical-ai-governance
Generative AI projects persist in public administration, even when AI tools fail to perform as promised: https://www.uef.fi/en/article/generative-ai-projects-persist-in-public-administration-even-when-ai-tools-fail-to-perform-as
More information from my personal website: https://research.choroszewicz.eu
Martin Ubani ([email protected])
Martin Ubani (PhD, M.Theol) is a professor of religious education at the University of Eastern Finland. His research interest concern religious education in public education, religion and multiculturalism and education, teacher education and spiritual education. Lately he has focused on religion and multiculturalism in public education and teacher education. He has published several books, chapters and articles. One of his publication is “Contextualising dialogue, secularisation and pluralism. Religion in Finnish public education” (Eds. Ubani, Rissanen & Poulter: Waxmann, 2019).
Ubani has served in several positions in Academic societies and for Finnish educational policy. He serves currently as a member in the Evaluation Council (2022-2026) of the Finnish Education and Evaluation Centre, in the Higher Education Evaluation Committee (2022-2026) and in the development group of religious and worldviews education issued by the Finnish Agency of Education. He was also part of the group devicing the portion for religious education in the core curriculum for basic education (2014). From 2023 Martin Ubani will serve as the co-chief editor of “Nordidactica. Journal of Humanities and Social Science Education.”
Professor Ubani has been since 2016 a visiting researcher at the Van Leer Institute, Jerusalem, Israel.
Masoud Fatemi ([email protected])
I am an interdisciplinary researcher in Computer Science and Linguistics and a double degree PhD candidate at the University of Eastern Finland and Linnaeus University in Sweden. My research is primarily focused on machine learning, network analysis, and natural language processing, with a special emphasis on deep neural networks, clustering, and modeling large-scale social networks. Trying to leverage advanced machine learning techniques to unravel the complex interactions within these networks.
Mastaneh Torkamani Azar ([email protected])
Postdoctoral Researcher at Biomedical Image Analysis Group, A.I Virtanen Institute, Faculty of Health Sciences, Kuopio (2022 – present) and Interactive Technologies, School of Computing, Joensuu (2020 – 2022). Leader of proof-of-concept project from 04.2022-11.2022 in collaboration with HUMEA laboratory, Department of Technical Physics, and the Microsurgery Center of Eastern Finland at Kuopio University Hospital. Actively working on statistical signal processing, interactive medical technologies, cognitive neuroscience (sustained attention / vigilance, psychophysiological stress) and mental state monitoring, multi-modal data analysis and decision fusion for data-driven surgery, microsurgery image synthesis using generative adversarial networks, and adaptive EEG-based brain-computer interfaces (BCIs).
Materials Technology Research Group
Matias Sivonen ([email protected])
I’m a PhD researcher majoring in environmental policy. My work focuses on studying how multi-stakeholder planning processes are organized in biodiversity conservation. In my dissertation, I study conflicts and collaboration in ministry-led workgroups which aim to reconcile fisheries and Saimaa ringed seal protection.
Matti Gurreck ([email protected])
Dr. Matti Gurreck is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Eastern Finland. His research takes place within the INTEL project (funded by the European Research Council, 2024-2029) and the FOUNDATIONS project (funded by the Academy of Finland, 2024-2028), which seek to develop the foundations of energy law in Europe. He is interested in EU and international energy law, environmental law, and food law. Before joining the University of Eastern Finland, he worked in research projects on water governance (as part of the German Advisory Council on Global Change, WBGU), energy law and climate policy. He obtained his PhD with a thesis on EU soft law and is a member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) as well as the GreenDeal-NET.