I am Professor of Social Work at the University of Helsinki. I was born in Fresno, California, but have lived in Finland for over 25 years. I received my licentiate and doctorate in social work at the University of Tampere. My early research interests were in multicultural social work and HIV/AIDS. I worked on the European Project AIDS & Mobility in the late 1990s, which advocated for migrants living with HIV by challenging stigmatizing xenophobic narratives and opening up dialogues about diverse sexualities and human behavior. I also directed two of the earliest migrant community-based research projects funded by the Ministry of Social Affairs and Health in 2002-04. Returning to teach at California State University, Fresno from 2007-2019, I was president of the Fresno State LGBT+ Faculty Association and faculty advisor for United Students Pride. My current research interests are in decolonial social work, abolitionist social work, harm reduction, and the social memory of HIV/AIDS.
Joa Hiitola (he/they) is a Professor of Social Work at Tampere University. Joa’s research focuses on issues related to family relationships and forced migration, relationalities in science and technology studies - particularly in the context of genetic testing - and the wellbeing of LGBTQI+ people.
Mimosa Puumalainen is a social worker, art therapist (EXA), Specialist in Sexological Counselling (NACS), designer, and doctoral researcher. She has extensive experience in the social field, working from a queer perspective, particularly in refugee social work. In her ongoing doctoral thesis, Mimosa explores the experiences of queer refugees in relation to Finnish authorities, services, and communities. Her research focuses especially on themes of identification, recognition, norms, and expectations in the lives of queer individuals who have experienced forced migration, using a longitudinal study approach.
Postdoctoral Researcher Samuel Salovaara (DSocSci) has focused their research on the digitalization of social work, particularly on information systems. Salovaara is interested in how information technology becomes part of various processes of knowledge formation and interprofessional collaboration in social work. Their research approach is multidisciplinary, and they especially apply theoretical perspectives from science and technology studies. Salovaara has studied the well-being of trans people as well as access to social and health care services.
Ilo Söderström's (VTT) research interests are related to sexuality and gender diversity, normativity, accessibility of social services, and anti-oppressive social work. In their dissertation, completed in 2024, Söderström examined the accessibility of social work from the perspective of queer people with a refugee background and the boundaries imposed on it by white normativity and heteronormativity. Söderström is involved in the joint Nordic teaching development project AFFIRM-ED – Affirmative education in social and healthcare for sexual and gender diversity (2025–2026), which aims to strengthen research-based teaching on LGBTQI+ themes in higher education in the social and health care sectors.
Postdoctoral researcher Valtteri Vähä-Savo (DSocSci) is interested in the entanglements of knowledge, power and norms in society. His project Evaluating Inner Truth examines institutional encounters in which experts and authorities seek to assess individuals' feelings, experiences and beliefs in the contexts of gender affirming treatments and the asylum process. His research interests also concern experiences of well-being and belonging among people living in vulnerable positions, migration studies, and posthumanist approaches.