I am a Professor in Social and Public Policy at the Department of Social Sciences. I am also the deputy director of the UEF’s Borders, Mobilities and Cultural Encounters (BOMOCULT) Research Community.
My research is oriented towards international migration, ethnic relations, bordering processes, diversity, embodiment, as well as participatory and creative methods. Over the years, I have studied topics, such as integration, racism and anti-racism, media use, everyday security, Russian nationality politics and international migration into rural areas.
The central theme of my research is the politicisation of migration issues and understanding how societal changes impact people’s everyday lives. Most recently, I have shifted my research focus towards the issues of security and conflicts. My teaching mainly relates to the above-mentioned themes. I supervise PhD researchers and MA thesis.
I am a qualified body-oriented work supervisor (työnohjaaja STOry), and I gladly support colleagues and students with issues related to well-being at work.
For those interested in doctoral studies under my supervision: If you are interested in applying for a doctoral researcher position in Social and Public Policy at UEF and would like me to supervise your work, please first familiarise yourself with the application guidelines for the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies Doctoral Programme, available on the UEF website. I receive dozens of enquiries of this kind every week and am only able to respond to a limited number of them. If you are seriously considering applying under my supervision, please send me a research proposal prepared in accordance with the application guidelines and without the use of artificial intelligence. I want to learn about you, your research idea and abilities as a researcher, not read generic texts produced by AI. Please also read carefully the section on funding for doctoral studies. It explains that the right to pursue doctoral studies does not include funding, and that funding must be sought separately.
“Traumatized Borders: Reviving Subversive Narratives of B/Order, and Other” (TB) is a multidisciplinary research project which investigates oral and written trauma narratives related to various topographic and symbolic borders in Russian, Finnish, Estonian, Ukrainian, and North-American contexts. In the project, traumas are understood as universal, but yet culturally bound narratives and linguistic constructions. Borders, on the other hand, are understood as political and cultural constructions that create traumas and determines the meaning and significance of border related trauma narratives. Geopolitically, TB focuses on the contemporary EU-Russian border, former Soviet internal borders, and the historical Soviet Union border with the West, whose influence reaches even the North-American context. The study covers time period between the 1920s to the present day including some of the most significant historical events that have defined Russia’s and its neighbors’ topographic and symbolic borders.
In the project, methods provided by cultural studies, folklore research, cultural anthropology, literature research and linguistics are applied.
The project is funded by the Academy of Finland.
My research generally focuses on community narratives, practices, and spaces of everyday co-existence, as well as the solidarities and tensions that emerge in response to hegemonic socio-political orderings. I use ethnographic and participatory research methods, apply critical theory, and aim to translate academic knowledge into peace action.
Responsible teacher (together with Paul Fryer) of the Master’s course “Global Conflicts in an Era of Globalization” (Human Geography).
Member of the Borders, Mobilities and Cultural Encounters (BOMOCULT) research community.
Co-creator of the Critical Edges Podcast, where we explore and discuss critical edges that may seem distant and marginal at first glance, but which are, in fact, very much connected to, and even interdependent with, our global society and politics.
Book review editor of the Journal of Disappearance Studies (Bristol University Press).
Associate researcher of the project Co-Imagine: Rethinking co-existence from the margins.
PUBLICATIONS: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4802-2829
Profile image: illustration by JP Ahonen
I hold a Doctorate in Social Sciences (DSocSci), Human Geography. My doctoral study explored the Finnish-Russian borderland as a lived space during the period from 2013 to 2018. The research examined how residents on both sides of the border imagined and used their local environment in a period of relatively free cross-border mobility. My previous studies have also focused on the everyday life of people living in the Finnish-Russian borderland and on territorial development in border areas.
My last research project was CHANEBO (Challenges at EU’s North-East External Borders). It analysed the impacts of Russia’s war in Ukraine war and the suspension of the CBC ENI programs on the north-eastern external border regions of the EU. It developed policy recommendations on how EU cohesion policy can better support the resilience and sustainable development of its external border regions in the face of future crises.
