Timo Harrikari (PhD, dos.) is Professor of Social Work (full) at the University of Helsinki and Principal Investigator (PI) of the CHILD SOCNET project. Throughout his research career, Harrikari's research has focused on social work, with a particular focus on child protection, juvenile delinquency and criminal justice. In recent years, Harrikari has broadened his research focus to include disaster social work. Harrikari's major international publications include Social Work and Social Change (2014), Towards Glocal Social Work in the Era of Compressed Modernity (2019) and Social Work during COVID-19: Glocal Perspectives and Implications for the future (2023).
Harry Lunabba (PhD, dos.) is a senior researcher on the project, focusing on the analysis of professional networks of social workers and child protection teams. A key area of interest is to examine the types of collaborative structures that make up child protection social work and the ways in which the professional networks of social work in different regions differ from one another. Lunabba is an expert in child protection and youth research, with a particular focus on qualitative methods in his research. Lunabba is inspired to explore the possibilities offered by social network analysis and its computational methods for examining social relations and structures in the context of child protection.
Samuel Salovaara (PhD) is a postdoctoral researcher in the research project, examining child protection networks from an organisational perspective. Salovaara is a researcher at the University of Lapland, specialising in research on digitalisation and information systems in social work. Salovaara is interested in how information technology becomes part of different processes of knowledge formation in social work and in the project he applies theoretical perspectives from science and technology research to examine the construction of socio-technical networks to support client, information and resource flows.
Jenika Heinonen (M.Sc., M.Ed.) is a doctoral researcher working on a research project focusing on the analysis of egocentric mental networks of child protection clients and the construction of social capital in these networks. The aim of the research is to generate new knowledge about the structures and characteristics of child protection clients' networks and to better understand which factors promote or hinder the development of social capital. Heinonen's wide-ranging experience in client work and development work in child protection gives her valuable practical insight into the issues underlying her research.