Who are you?
I am a sociologist who works at Uppsala University in Sweden. Due to supervision and collaboration tasks, I have an ongoing associate professor-affiliation at the CEACG. Together with Tom Kettunen I also serve on the editorial team for the partly CEACG-based scientific journal Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs (NAD).
How did you end up at CEACG?
I was part of the founding of the centre in 2011. We were a group of researchers who had been part of the IMAGES-consortium (‘Images and Theories of Addiction’, 2007-2011) and Pekka Sulkunen’s doctoral seminars. There was a need to bring these people and projects together. In 2011, I received a larger grant for a EU-project and around the same time Pekka asked if I wanted to join in establishing a new research group. This felt very exciting and also in line with my own wishes to embark upon an academic path.
What is your current research about?
While I am involved in many projects and themes with CEACG-colleagues, such as Paula Jääskeläinen, Josefin Westermarck and Mika Tsupari, the two projects that are consuming me the most this autumn are based in Uppsala. One concerns how to combine qualitative semiotic tools with datafied Natural Language Processing (NLP) methods and the other is an explorative project funded by the European Union’s Drug Agency (EUDA) on the future of addiction science publishing. In the latter we are arranging a panel and workshops at the LxAddictions 2024 conference.
Why do you think it is important to examine this topic?
Both projects concern the future of how we produce and process text and what it means for society and knowledge production. This is especially topical in the light of the growing role of AI and pre-trained language models such as ChatGPT.
If you could switch places with your CEACG colleague for one day, who would you choose and why?
I'm curious about the people who have joined the centre after I stepped away. Some are working on projects that I was part of planning or I heard about them as early ideas. For example Paula Rautoja and Sara Havuaho are people I would like to know better and whose work I am curious about.