Researchers

Professor (tenured) of social justice and equality in education 

Research areas:

• Marketisation, privatisation, neoliberalism, knowledge and affective capitalism, (new) governance
• Social exclusion, societal differences, and inequalities, societal power relations
• Agency perspectives in higher education, research, vocational education, teacher training, youth work, adult education and public sector development activities
• Heteronormativity and the rise of psy-disciplines
• Future trajectories of education in terms of precision education governance

Ongoing projects: FuturEd, CoSupport



Website kristiinabrunila.com

Twitter @KristiinaBrunil

Contact: kristiina.brunila@helsinki.fi

Postdoctoral researcher

Research areas:

• New practices of mental health work and ableism
• Gender equality politics and equality work
• Poststructural methodologies and nomadic research
• Theories of power and subjectification

Ongoing project: CoSupport

Contact: elina.ikavalko@helsinki.fi

University lecturer

Research areas:

• Theories of intersectionality and anti-racism.
• Norm criticism in children’s culture and critical literacies in early childhood education
• Privatization of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services
  • Marketization of ECEC pedagogy
  • Precision education and ECEC teacher’s profession
  • Assemblages of edu-business

Ongoing projects: CoSupport, FuturEd

Contact: jaana.pesonen@helsinki.fi

University lecturer

Research areas:

• Privatization of early childhood education and care (ECEC) serrvices
• Marketization of ECEC pedagogy
• Precision education and ECEC teacher’s profession
• Assemblages of edu-business

Ongoing projects: CoSupport, FuturEd

Contact: satu.m.valkonen@helsinki.fi

Postdoctoral researcher

Research areas:

• Social constructions of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
• Identity and subjectivity constructions, otherness and othering, social Inclusion and exclusion, ableism in education discourse practices
• Theorizing inclusive education, (mis)conceptualizations of inclusive education
• Implementation of behavioral support at schools
• Disability studies in education, Inclusive education, Special education, Discourse studies

Ongoing projects: CoSupport

Contact: juho.honkasilta@helsinki.fi

Postdoctoral researcher

Research areas:

• Future projections in Nordic comprehensive education
• Social Systems Theory 
• Comparative approaches on education policy
• Deregulation, privatization and marketization of education

Ongoing projects: PROFE, FuturEd

Contact: petteri.hansen@helsinki.fi

University lecturer

Research areas:

• History of Education
• Construction of Finnish teacher education in post-war Finland
• Academisation of teacher education
• Digitalisation and future visions in education
• Rhetoric analysis

Ongoing projects: FuturEd

Contact: janne.santti@helsinki.fi

Postdoctoral researcher

Research areas:

• Education politics
• Comparative and international education
• Large-scale assessments and education indicators as political instruments
• The interface of public and private actors in education governance
• Commodification and marketization of education
• Quality assurance and evaluation policies in education
• Finnish education export
• Education policies and practices in the Global South

Ongoing projects: Demystifying education export: analyzing the effects of Finnish education export from the perspective of the importer; FuturEd

Chair of Crit­ical so­ci­ology and philo­sophy in education (CRISP) -seminar

Contact: helena.candido@helsinki.fi

Professor

Research areas:

• Positioning of neuroscience and learning psychology in the field of educational sciences
• Effects of arts and skills education on agency and cognition

Ongoing projects: FuturEd



Contact: minna.huotilainen@helsinki.fi

University lecturer

Research area:

• philosophical and ethical questions in education on both societal and classroom level.

Current projects are:

• A critique of "competence". Globalization and its influence on basic notions in education.
• The body and the digital. The need of bodily and physical experience of oneself, the other(s) and the world for learning, teaching and understanding
• Communities of inquiry: Critical engagement in knowledge as a shared task with others, both classroom-methods of philosophy for children and democratic strategies for empowerment, enlightenment and resistance.

Postdoctoral researcher

Research areas and interests:

• Critical perspectives on integration of people categorized as refugees and immigrants
• Anti-racism, racialization, inequality, diversity and inclusion/exclusion
• Power-relations and power dynamics
• Employment, employability, skilling, and education

Contact: ameera.masoud@helsinki.fi

Post-doc researcher

Research areas:

• Governance, youth education, education policy, digitalisation

Current research:

• Future of youth education and precision education governance
• Digitalisation, marketisation and globalisation of youth education

Ongoing projects: FuturEd

Contact: katariina.mertanen@helsinki.fi

Doctoral student

Research areas:

• Governmentality, neoliberalism, youth support systems, psychologisation, entrepreneuralisation, citizenship, subjectification
• Geneaology, History of the present
• Philosophy and critical social anthropology  Postcolonial and feminist theory

Topic of PhD:

• Governing young people through neoliberal management – A Genealogy of vulnerability of young people in Finland.

Ongoing projects: CoSupport

Contact: kalle.makela@helsinki.fi

Doctoral student

Research areas:

• Philosophy of critical pedagogy, Critical feminist theory
• Critical Social Theory
• Democratic education, and political sociology of education

Topic of PhD:

• Developing theory of democratic education from the standpoint of philosophies of critical pedagogies, and providing new theoretical perspectives in conversation with recent critical feminist and political theories.
• The philosophy of critical pedagogy in my project refers to theoretical framework that draws its philosophical foundations from Critical Social Theory and is originated by Paulo Freire’s political pedagogy.

Ongoing projects: CoSupport

Contact: katariina.tiainen@helsinki.fi

Doctoral student 

Research areas:

• Immigration, gender and feminist studies
• Motherhood ideology

Topic of PhD:

• Immigrant mothers’ educational experiences and sense of belonging in Icelandic higher education, in conjunction with their identity construction and strategies for balancing multiple responsibilities to achieve academic success.  Research also investigates the impact of intersectional approach or lack thereof in educational policies and practices on educational experiences of students of minority background

Doctoral student

Research areas:

• Precision education governance
• Life-Skills Management policies
• Youth transitions
• Genealogical-discursive approaches

Topic of PhD:

• Rethinking Life Skills-Based Education as a Form of Precision Education Governance

Ongoing projects: FuturEd

Contact: saara.vainio@helsinki.fi

Doctoral student

Research areas and interests:

• inequality, power-relations, critical theories in education
• human rights education
• moral philosophy
• philosophy of education

Topic of PhD:

• Re-evaluating the moral, educational and legal aspects in human rights education

Doctoral student

Research areas:

• The Anthropocene
• Political agency and subjectivity
• Neoliberal governance
• Early Childhood Education, Childhood studies
• Biopower and biopolitics  

Topic of PhD:

• Possibilities and problems for political agency of the child in the Anthropocene. Interested in what kind of agency of child is fabricated as ideal in the future of Education connected to the Anthropocene. 
• Especially interested in ’subject-making’ implications of discourses and policies connected to the Anthropocene and future of Education. Approach to these problems is informed by Foucauldian accounts of (bio)power and governance.

Ongoing projects: FuturEd

Contact: Kirsi.Yliniva@oulu.fi

Doctoral student

Research areas:

• Therapeutic governance, psychologisation, critical psychology

Topic of PhD: 

• Dynamics of therapeutic governance in school psychologists’ work in upper secondary education

Contact: anni.hirsaho@helsinki.fi

Senior Researcher, Adjunct Professor

Research areas:

• International higher education partnerships
• Global education in higher education
• Intercultural teacher education

Ongoing projects:  

• Africa-Finland research partnerships and the Global Innovation Network for Teaching and Learning
• Global connectedness in higher education

Contact: hanna.kontio@helsinki.fi

Doctoral student

Research areas:

• Gender normativities
• Masculinity
• Therapeutic culture and youth mental health
• Subjectivity

Topic of PhD: 

• The discursive constructions of gender normativities, especially ideals associated with masculinity, and mental health in Finland, and the consequences and reactions these discourses produce among young people. As such, my research addresses what do these discourses do and what kind of subject positions do they cultivate for young people.

Contact: inka.tahka@helsinki.fi

Doctoral student

Research areas:

• Psychiatrization
• Therapeutic governance
• Practices and policies in education and related fields
• Critical discourse studies

Topic of PhD:

• I study the nepsy concept, referring to neuropsychiatry, that has become popular in Finnish education and health and social services. I seek to understand the functions and power relations of this conceptual trend. I am interested in the spread of psychological and medical terminology and explanations beyond these fields and their tendency to shift attention from structures to individuals.

Contact: hillevi.vyyrylainen@helsinki.fi

Doctoral student

Research areas:

• Privatization and marketization of education
• Education policy
• Edu-business

Topic of PhD:

• The objective of my research is to delve into the intricate realm of educational privatization and educational business (edu-business) in Finland, contextualized within the evolving landscape of changing educational governance towards precision education governance

Contact: essi.m.makela@helsinki.fi

Doctoral researcher

Research areas:

• Order and disorder (as counterparts), normativities, power relations on both school institution and classroom, feminist theory, sociology of education

Topic of PhD:

• Disorder and order in schooling in Finland. The aim of my study is to construct new insight about the normative idea of order and disorder that produces power relations and exclusive binaries in the context of Finnish primary school.

Contact: veera.tervo@helsinki.fi

University Lecturer

Research areas:

• Youth studies
• Gender studies
• Masculinities
• Intersectionality

Contact: marja.peltola@helsinki.fi

Doctoral student

Research areas:

• Adult ADHD
• Psychiatrization 
• Psychiatric governance
• Critical discourse studies

Topic of PhD:

• Making of 'adult ADHD’ through professional and lay expertise. I study the phenomenon of “adult ADHD” through the lenses of psychiatrization and governance. I will concentrate on the discursive practices which shape the concept of “adult ADHD” by focusing on media representations and voices of professional and lay experts of ADHD

Contact: hanna.dromberg@helsinki.fi