ENS Programme Director Hanna Tuominen is a University Lecturer at the University of Helsinki and Docent in Political Science (International Relations) at the University of Turku. She holds a PhD in Political Science. She currently holds research affiliations at the Centre for European Studies (CES) and has ongoing projects at Jure (Just Recovery from Covid-19? Fundamental Rights, Legitimate Governance and Lessons Learnt).
Hanna Tuominen is teaching and coordinating several courses in joint studies of the programme, and in the EU-module. She is also responsible for the master’s seminar and supervising students. Her main research interests are related to EU values and norms, especially reflected in external relations of the EU. She has studied EU role in different human rights issues, mainly focusing on the UN. The current global situation shows how different norms have become increasingly contested. Therefore, she is interested in norm contestation processes and norm advocacy of various actors. She has also studied Europeanization processes and Nordic cooperation concerning common asylum policy. The focus of our programme is natural to her as she is interested in Nordic perspectives to European cooperation and policymaking. Some of her latest research themes concern also current Finnish EU and UN policy, which reflect both continuity and change.
ENS Deputy Programme Director Peter Stadius is a Research Director and Professor, at the Department of Cultures. He is Docent at the Faculty of Arts. He is currently working as Professor for the Centre for Nordic Studies CENS, and teaching in the ENS Master's Programme. He is a specialist of Nordic Studies and a Supervisor for doctoral programme, in the Doctoral Programme in History and Cultural Heritage, as well as the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change.
Peter Stadius has been teaching at ENS over a decade, together with Professor Johan Strang he is in charge of the Centre for Nordic Studies (CENS), which is one of two research institution partners of ENS. His background is in the discipline of history, but he has been teaching inter-disciplinary Nordic Studies since 1998.
His major research interests have been the image of the Nordic region seen form the outside, and especially the dynamics of north and south in Europe. Nordic cooperation history and current themes is also one of his long-lasting research and teaching subjects.
Dr. Leena Malkki is a Docent from the Faculty of Social Sciences. She is a University Lecturer from the Centre for European Studies. She takes part in the Helsinki Inequality Initiative (INEQ), and is a Supervisor for the Doctoral Programme in Gender, Culture, and Society, and the Doctoral Programme in School, Education, Society, and Culture.
Dr. Leena Malkki is a historian and political scientist specialised in terrorism and political violence. Her areas of interest include terrorism in western countries, disengagement from terrorist campaigns, resilience to political violence, lone actor terrorism and leaderless resistance, school shootings, the development of Finnish counter-terrorism policy and counterradicalisation programmes in the European countries. Dr. Malkki is currently the Director of the Centre for European Studies at the University of Helsinki.
Her teaching at the ENS Programme focuses on terrorism and political violence, qualitative content analysis, European studies, the EU and public opinion.
You can find out more about Leena Malkki on her personal blog.
Johanna Kantola joined the Center for European Studies (CES) in the University Helsinki as Professor of European Societies and their Politics in November 2022. Her main teaching affilitation at the University of Helsinki is with the ENS Masters Programme. She was previously Professor of Gender Studies at Tampere University (2017-2022). She has a PhD in Politics from the University of Bristol (2004) and became Docent in Politics at the University of Helsinki in 2007. She is a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Gender and EU Studies in the University of Tübingen, Germany (2022-2025).
Furthermore, Johanna Kantola is the Director of the research project EUGenDem: " Gender, party politics and democracy in Europe: A study of European Parliament's party groups ", funded by the European Research Council Consolidator Grant (2018-2023). She is also PI at the University of Helsinki for CCindle: Co-Creating Inclusive Intersectional Democratic Spaces Across Europe, EU Horizon Europe (2022-2026). Finally, she is the Director of the Academy of Finland (2016-2020) and University of Helsinki Research Funds (2015-2017) funded research project Gender and Power in Reconfigured Corporatist Finland (GePoCo).
Johanna Kantola really looks forward to teaching on these issues in the ENS MA programme from autumn 2023 onwards. One of the courses that she plans to teach will be an advanced course on European Parliament and the political dynamics created by its political groups. She is enthusiastic about the course because of the timeliness created by the European Parliamentary elections to be held in May 2024. Together with the students she will be able to explore the different political group positions as well as different member state dynamics around the upcoming elections.
Professor Johan Strang's research interests include Nordic politics, society and history. He is affiliated with the Centre for Nordic Studies (CENS). He has published and taught on Nordic cooperation, democracy and political history, and also rather extensively on Nordic intellectual and philosophical history of the 20th century.
He is currently focusing on a Academy of Finland Research Fellowship project Norden since the End of History (NORDEND). He examines the redefinition of Norden and Nordicity after the end of the Cold War. He is also engaged in the programme Neoliberalism in the Nordics led by Professor Jenny Andersson in Uppsala and financed by Riksbankens Jublieumsfond.
Byron Rom-Jensen is a University Lecturer from the Department of Cultures, at the Centre for Nordic Studies CENS. He has acted as University Lecturer in Nordic Studies since January 2022. A historian by training, Byron has taught and supervised MA students in a range of topics relating to the Nordic region and its connections to Europe and the world.
Following his PhD, Byron was a postdoctoral researcher on a project tracing the Nordic model as a concept in its global circulations from 1970 to 2020. These attempts to track the international and global spread of Nordic model(s) appear in Byron’s teaching, including on the Politics of Nordic Cooperation, Nordic Labor Movements, and Nordic Societies and Cultures. In these courses, Byron encourages students to examine the Nordic region through their own unique personal perspectives, whether they are a native of Finland or just arrived.