Ahmed Hussein ([email protected])
Aleksander Osipov ([email protected])
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 have ranged from the 19th century Finnish migration and the Russian Civil War to post-Soviet decolonization and environmental history. He is presently examining state-building processes and strategies in the post-Soviet space from an environmental history perspective. His study explores the role of natural landscapes in state-building in Eastern Europe and Central Asia.
Andrew Agbaje ([email protected])
Prof. Agbaje is an award-winning physician and professor (associate) of clinical epidemiology and child health who investigates the causal relationships of aerobic fitness, physical activity, sedentary behaviour, obesity, insulin resistance, dyslipidaemia, and metabolic syndrome with arterial, cardiac, liver, and kidney structure and function from childhood through young adulthood.
Prof. Agbaje is the world’s 1st (Number 1) highest-ranked scholar, best in Europe and in the Nordics in arterial stiffness specialty according to ScholarGPS November 2025 global ranking. He was ranked first in the top 0.01% of scholars on arterial stiffness research worldwide, both in productivity and quality in arterial stiffness research in the last 5 years.
Research group Website https://urfit-child.com
American Society of Nutrition Flemming Quaade Award Video Interview
TEDx Talk – Tailor’s Tape to the Rescue
Rising Star in Preventive Cardiology – Prestigious Designation by the European Heart Journal
Prof. Agbaje discovered childhood tobacco smoking as a cause of premature cardiac damage and identified that smoking prevalence increased 15 times between the age of 13 to 17 years. He also discovered arterial stiffness as a novel risk factor for paediatric obesity and insulin resistance, identified adolescence as the critical time to interrupt fat mass-insulin resistance pathologic cycle, and demonstrated light-intensity physical activity as a highly effective antidote for reversing excessive fat deposit induced by childhood sedentariness. Recently, he discovered waist-to-height ratio as a specific surrogate for fat mass but not muscle mass that could replace BMI in assessing childhood obesity. Subsequently, he was interviewed LIVE on BBC World News TV to discuss the novel findings.
In December 2025, the American Heart Association selected Prof Agbaje’s study as one of the world’s cutting-edge advances in cardiovascular medicine in 2025. Similarly, in December 2024, the American Heart Association selected Prof Agbaje’s study as one of the world’s most significant advances in cardiovascular research in 2024. In October 2023, two of Prof. Agbaje’s publications were placed in the Top 1% highly cited paper in the academic field of Clinical Medicine, while a third publication was placed in the Top 1% highly cited paper in the academic field of Biology & Biochemistry by Clarivate’s Web of Science.
He is the main supervisor of seven (7) PhD candidates.
He has single/first-authored original papers in highly prestigious journals such as JACC, Diabetes Care, and Nature Communications. He was interviewed LIVE on BBC World Service Radio Newsday programme on 15th Dec 2023, BBC Radio Devon on 16th Jan 2024, and BBC World News LIVE TV programme on 14th March 2024. The University of Eastern Finland recorded a podcast interview of his findings as well as a video.
The Endocrine Society in US recorded a podcast interview of his research and discussed his research in the prestigious Endocrine Magazine March 2024 edition. He gave a press conference at the ENDO 2024 congress in Boston, US. He was interviewed by the European Association for the Study of Obesity, a federation of 36 European countries’ professional associations and subsequently had a video interview at the European Congress on Obesity.
His research has received extensive press coverage, with over 2,500 media mentions from 2022 through 2024 in outlets such as BBC, CNN, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, Mirror, BILD, Infobae, Yahoo Lifestyle, Yahoo Sport, US News & World report, DocCheck, MSN, WebMD, Medscape, The Conversation, Jerusalem Post, Helsingin Sanomat, YLE, etc, potentially reaching a global audience of more than 4.5 billion. The equivalent advertising value of these news articles is more than 30 million US dollars.
He is the principal investigator of the urFIT-child research group and has strong collaboration with world-renowned pediatricians, exercise physiologists, epidemiologists, and adult clinicians in Canada, US, UK, Germany, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, etc.
He received the prestigious inaugural American Society of Nutrition Foundation-Novo Nordisk Foundation Flemming Quaade Award for Innovative Approaches to Childhood Obesity with 500,000 Danish Kroner (€67,000 / 70,000 USD) prize. the 2024 EASO-NNF for New Investigator Award in Childhood Obesity with a 300,000 Danish Kroner (€40,000 / 44,000 USD) prize. Other awards are the Endocrine Society Award for outstanding abstract, American Heart Association’s Elizabeth Barrett-Connor Research Award in Epidemiology and Prevention (once), Jeremiah and Rose Stamler Research Award (twice), Early Career Investigator Award for Preventive Cardiovascular Medicine (Once), and Paul Dudley White International Scholar Award (five consecutive times).
He co-authored an American Heart Association Scientific Statement on Environmental Exposures and Pediatric Cardiology, published in Circulation. He had a video discussion of the Scientific Statement. He has given invited talks at the largest mother and child center in Canada – CHU Sainte-Justine Mother and Child University Hospital Center, Canada, European Society of Cardiology Congress, European Congress on Obesity, Endocrine Society Congress in the US, Artery Society Congress, etc.
Honorary Research Fellow at the Children’s Health and Exercise Research Centre (CHERC), Faculty of Health and Life Sciences, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK from 2023 – 2026.
He is an Associate Editor in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia, and Muscle (JCSM), Associate Editor of the European Journal of Preventive Cardiology (EJPC), serves on the editorial board of Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology (ATVB), and mentors early-career editorial board members. He also serves on the editorial board of npj Exercise Medicine and Health and, editorial board of Pediatric Exercise Science journals.
He is an elected Fellow of the American College of Cardiology (FACC), Fellow of the European Society of Cardiology (FESC), an elected Fellow of the American Heart Association (FAHA), an elected Fellow of the New York Academy of Medicine (FNYAM), and an elected member of Sigma Xi. These titles of honour, symbol of excellence and lifetime achievement, recognizes his significant contribution to the cardiovascular field in Europe and America.
He is an expert advisor to the World Health Organization,
and a member of the European Association for the Study of Obesity and the US Endocrine Society’s task force on preventing childhood obesity.
Primary email is [email protected]
Secondary email is [email protected]
Anna Kinnunen ([email protected])
I am a folklorist and cultural researcher specializing in cultural studies in mental health. In my doctoral dissertation (2020) I examined cultural conceptions and vernacular models of thought related to mental illness. I have also conducted research on old age and dementia. From 2016 to 2019, I worked in the research project Between the Normal and the Abnormal – Cultural meanings of Dementia and Old Age in Finland and Russia, funded by the Kone Foundation. The project resulted in the edited volume Babuškoja, teräsvaareja ja digisenioreita (eds. Kinnunen, Könönen & Vakimo 2022), which explores experiences of ageing and cultural imaginaries related to old age in Finland and Russia.
I work as a university lecturer in folklore studies in the degree programme of cultural studies. In addition to folklore studies, I teach common core courses in cultural studies and supervise theses in both folklore and cultural studies. I am also responsible for the study module Terveyden monikulttuuriset ulottuvuudet (Multicultural Dimensions of Health, 25 ECTS), which introduces students to cultural aspects of health, illness and well‑being across different populations and sociocultural contexts. Among other things, I am in charge of the courses Kulttuurinen mielenterveystutkimus (Cultural Mental Health Studies) and Vernakulaari terveyskulttuuri (Vernacular Health Culture). I have received the Good Teacher Award granted by the cultural studies student association Nefa in 2023 and 2024.
Anna Laakkonen ([email protected])
I defended my doctoral dissertation in the field of Finnish history at the University of Eastern Finland in September 2025. In my dissertation, I study how Finns operated as part of the Soviet press in Soviet Karelia during the 1920s and 1930s. In addition to press activities, my research also addressed ethnic relations in Soviet Karelia, changes in the language used in propaganda, the relationship between Moscow and Soviet Karelia, and the mechanisms of Stalin’s terror. My doctoral dissertation was completed in close collaboration with the researchers of the Finns in Russia 1917–1964 project at the National Archives of Finland.
From 2024 to 2025, I worked as a ERC research assistant in the international project The Age of Civil Wars in Europe, which investigates the transnational connections of European civil wars. The project is coordinated by University College Dublin and funded by the European Research Council.
Currently, I’m working on my postdoctoral research project titled Punalippu (Red Flag), Glasnost, and the History of the Finns. I study how the history of the Finns in the Soviet Union was remembered and written about in the Finnish-language journal Punalippu, which was published in Petrozavodsk, the capital of Soviet Karelia, during the years of glasnost. The project is funded by the Kone Foundation.
Anna Saurama ([email protected])
My research project is titled “Gendered neuronormativity in the discussion on ADHD and women in Finnish media”. I approach my media data as cultural texts from perspectives provided by e.g. neurodiversity studies and neuroqueer theory to explore normativities concerning both neurocognitive functioning and gender, and how these normativities intertwine.
Anna-Maija Tolppanen ([email protected])
I have multidisciplinary background (MSc in bioinformatics, PhD in genetic epidemiology and >15 years’ experience in different fields and application areas of epidemiology since completing my PhD. My current research focusses on pharmacoepidemiology and clinical epidemiology.
The overarching aim of my research is to develop and implement methods and approaches for evaluating effectiveness and safety of treatments by using real-world data. The applied data ranges from national register-based studies to multi- and single-center studies using data from electronic medical records and medical reports as well as data collected specifically for research purposes.
My group has produced internationally recognized real-world evidence on utilisation and outcomes of different treatments, compared and validated different patient-reported outcome measurements and determined clinically important threshold values for them, and evaluated health inequalities in neurodegenerative disorders.
My research has been funded by e.g Academy of Finland research fellowship, 3x grants from Michael J Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s research, work package leadership in Horizon-EU funded project Real4Reg coordinated by the German Medicines Agency. I collaborate actively with different stakeholders.
Annastiina Husso ([email protected])
Antti-Jussi Kouvo ([email protected])
I am a senior lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Eastern Finland. My teaching focuses on research methods, especially statistical ones. My research focuses on well-being, social cohesion and social networks. I have studied the topics in the contexts of welfare states, neighborhoods and the disadvantaged groups. For example, in our research project “The neighboring networks of the older city dwellers” we looked at the role of neighborhood networks for the well-being of older people and in our current project called SISU (funded by Research Council of Finland) I lead a work package that focuses on the role of institutional trust during the green transition. In CoROL project funded by the Finnish Research Council we analyze the current state of public trust towards the legal system in European countries as well as threats to rule of law. I also love to collect data. At the moment, together with our country team, I implement the data collection and research of the European SHARE survey research infrastructure (Survey of Health, Aging and Retirement in Europe) in Finland.
The focus of my teaching activities has been statistical research methods and the broader philosophical-methodological questions of social research. In addition, I have practiced many kinds of teaching that deal with the themes of inequality, community and well-being. The development and management of teaching is also close to my heart.