Before joining the HCAS as a Core Fellow for a three-year term in 2017, I served as a university lecturer on a substitute, annual basis. My term at the Collegium was transformative, enabling me to evolve both as a researcher—with ample time devoted exclusively to my research project—and as an educator, thanks to courses in university pedagogy I pursued. Following my term at the Collegium, I secured a permanent position as a university lecturer in General Linguistics at the University of Eastern Finland. However, the value of a term at the Collegium extends beyond mere research time; it includes the opportunity to network with like-minded scholars and immerse oneself in an extraordinarily inspiring work environment. The privilege and impact of my experience at the Collegium on my career are immeasurable. Currently, in the times when I'm not engaged in teaching, I dedicate myself to several research projects. These projects are collaborative efforts with colleagues from other European universities, focusing on the morphology of languages from both psycholinguistic and computational perspectives. For me, collaboration is essential for success. I firmly believe that working together with other researchers often yields results that are greater than the mere sum of their parts.
I am currently Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Turku, and will start as Tenure Track Professor in Gender Studies at Tampere University in August 2024. I had a pleasure to work as a core fellow in HCAS 2017-2019. Those years had tremendous impact on my research and career. HCAS was a generous intellectual community that encouraged exchange of ideas across national and disciplinary borders.
My research interests lie in the fields of feminist political economy, political sociology and gender equality policy research. My research in recent years has concerned, broadly speaking, gendered economy-society relations. I have been particularly interested in recent shifts in state and governance, and their influence on gender equality policy and feminist politics. My research project at HCAS, entitled Missing “Plan F” – A battle between knowledge, economy and equality in the changing welfare state revolved also around these topics. Currently, I also lead a research project Equality to economics, feminism to fiscal policy: Tensions of feminist knowledge and politics in the strategic state (Kone Foundation), continuing from my research at HCAS.
Some projects have long tails: in February 2024 Anna Elomäki and I published a book entitled Governing Gender Equality Policy: Pathways in a Changing Nordic Welfare State (Palgrave Macmillan). The basis for this book were laid, and the first data collected, in HCAS.