Out of the 453 applications received in the fall 2024 Core Fellowship call, 16 researchers were selected to the Core Fellowship Program for terms ranging from one to three years. The HCAS Core Fellowship Program offers researchers the opportunity to concentrate on their research projects without administrative duties and encourages interdisciplinary collaboration across different fields of study.
Dr. Otto Lappi, Dr. Patrik Wikman, and Dr. Acer Tang will be affiliated with the project Interdisciplinary Approaches to Intelligence (Intelligence3). Funded by the University of Helsinki and coordinated by HCAS, the project is a collaborative framework between HCAS, the Neuroscience Center at Helsinki Institute for Life Science (HiLIFE), and the Department of Computer Science at the Faculty of Science.
Dr. Corrie Tan will join the Collegium as the new Postdoctoral Fellow in the Arts for the academic year 2025–26. The Kone Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Arts promotes new forms of dialogue between art and scholarship.
In the fall of 2024, HCAS launched the new HCAS-RJ Fellowship Programme, which aims at facilitating and strengthening academic collaboration between Swedish and Finnish research communities. The first HCAS-RJ Fellow, joining the Collegium for 2025–26, is Dr. Olle Blomberg.
Kevin Durrheim, Distinguished Professor in Psychology at the University of Johannesburg, will join the HCAS as the new Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor in Studies on Contemporary Society for the 2025–2026 academic year.
Finally, the HCAS continues the invitational Kone Foundation Visiting Fellowship Program for Baltic, Belarusian, Ukrainian and Russian scholars. In the next academic year, the HCAS will host four Kone Foundation Visiting Fellows.
The next calls for the Core Fellowship, the Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Arts, and the HCAS-RJ Fellowship will open in mid-August 2025 and close in mid-September 2025. You may find more information about these calls on the HCAS website.
Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professor in Studies on Contemporary Society
Prof. Kevin Durrheim, Distinguished Professor in Psychology at the University of Johannesburg
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2026
Core Fellows
Dr. Robert Boddice
Field of research: History and Social Psychology
Current affiliation: Tampere University and McGill University
Project title: Panic Studies: A Transdisciplinary Research Initiative
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2027
Dr. Stefan Dedio
Field of research: Linguistics
Current affiliation: University of Zurich
Project title: Semantic Role Marking between Diachrony and Contact
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2028
Dr. Melissa Demian
Field of research: Social anthropology
Current affiliation: University of St Andrews
Project title: Sorcery and Conspiracy: Anthropology's Engagement with Alternative Realities
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2026
Dr. Kristina Jacobsen
Field of research: Anthropology and Ethnomusicology
Current affiliation: University of New Mexico
Project title: Three Miles an Hour on the Camino de Santiago: An Ethnography of Mindful Walking and Collaborative Songwriting
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2027
Dr. Roope Kaaronen
Field of research: Social sciences
Current affiliation: University of Helsinki
Project title: Minds at Play: Tracing the Cultural Roots of Complex Cognition and Technological Innovation Through Games and Play
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2028
Dr. Elena Kochetkova
Field of research: Economic and social history
Current affiliation: University of Bergen
Project title: Engineering Food Modernity: Science and Technology in Industrial Food Making in the Late Soviet Union
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2027
Dr. Mikhail Kopotev
Field of research: Russian and general linguistics
Current affiliation: University of Helsinki
Project title: Resilience of Power: The Russian Literary Language through Political Challenges
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2027
Prof. Amanda Lagerkvist
Field of research: Media and communication studies
Current affiliation: Uppsala University
Project title: Dismedia: Technologies of the Extraordinary Self
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2026
Prof. Fred Markowitz
Field of research: Sociology
Current affiliation: Northern Illinois University
Project title: Mental Illness, Social Embeddedness, and Crime
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2026
Dr. Ksenia Medvedeva
Field of research: Sociology and Religious Studies
Current affiliation: Polish Academy of Sciences
Project title: Environmental Engagement of Eastern Orthodox Churches and Orthodox Eco-Discourses
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2028
Prof. Nataša Pantić
Field of research: Education
Current affiliation: University of Edinburgh
Project title: Re-thinking knowledge base for teachers in contexts of change
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2026
Dr. Mika Perälä
Field of research: Philosophy
Current affiliation: University of Helsinki and University of Cambridge
Project title: Epistemic Priorities in Aristotle’s Thought
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2027
Dr. Indrek Reiland
Field of research: Philosophy
Current affiliation: University of Vienna
Project title: LLM Language Use
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2027
Dr. Alexa Stiller
Field of research: European History
Current affiliation: University of Zurich
Project title: Visions of Accountability: The Historical Emergence of the International Criminal Law Regime, 1989–2002
Fellowship period: 1.2.2026–31.12.2027
Prof. Teivo Teivainen
Field of research: World Politics
Current affiliation: University of Helsinki
Project title: Toward the Global Political: Transnational Representation of Business Corporations and Social Movements
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2026
Prof. Kevin Toh
Field of research: Philosophy of Law
Current affiliation: University College London
Project title: The Geometry of Legal Thought
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2026
Intelligence3 Fellows
Dr. Acer Chang
Field of Research: Neuroscience and Informatics
Current affiliation: Rikkyo University
Project title: Unifying Intelligence: Active Agency and Information-Theoretic Principles in Biological and Artificial Systems
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2028
Dr. Otto Lappi
Field of research: Cognitive Science
Current affiliation: University of Helsinki
Project title: The Intelligence Advantage – Human vs. Artificial
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2028
Dr. Patrik Wikman
Field of research: Neuropsychology
Current affiliation: University of Helsinki
Project title: Audiococktail: The Neural ingredients of Cognitive Sound Representations
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2028
Kone Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Arts
Dr. Corrie Tan
Field of research: Theatre and Performance Studies
Current affiliation: King’s College London and National University of Singapore
Project title: “Dramaturgies of Inconvenience”: Archipelagic Performance-Making in a Polycrisis
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2026
HCAS-RJ Fellow
Dr. Olle Blomberg
Field of research: Philosophy
Current affiliation: University of Gothenburg
Project title: Resultant and Interpersonal Moral Luck: The Manifestation View
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–14.8.2026
Kone Foundation Visiting Fellows
Prof. Milda Ališauskienė
Field of research: Sociology
Current affiliation: Vytautas Magnus University
Project title: Constructing Religious Diversity in Contemporary Lithuania: Negotiating Soviet Heritage, Nationalism and Discrimination
Fellowship Period: 1.1.2026–15.6.2026
Dr. Tetiana Kalytenko
Field of research: Comparative Literature
Current affiliation: Europa-Universität Viadrina
Project title: When Fiction Makes Reality: Kalevala and Kobzar as Nation-Building Texts
Fellowship period: 25.8.2025–15.6.2026
Prof. Oleg Lekmanov
Field of research: Russian Literature
Current affiliation: Princeton University
Project title: Osip Mandelstam and Finland
Fellowship period: 15.8.2025–15.6.2026
Prof. Iuliia Pavlova
Field of research: Psychology
Current affiliation: Ivan Bobersky Lviv State University of Physical Culture
Project title: Health, Well-being, and Psychological Adaptation of Children and Youth during the Russia-Ukraine War
Fellowship period: 25.8.2025–19.12.2025