Researchers

Ellen J. Eftestøl and Anu Bask established the INTERTRAN research group in 2010 as an interdisciplinary research group in transport law & logistics. The two lead the group together with Suvi Sankari, who takes a particular interest in research methods and legal theory. Today the group takes a broad perspective on sustainable business and law and includes researchers from several fields of science, including philosophy, economy and social science. Our research network consists of a number of national and international collaborators.  We also keep close contact with the Finnish business sector, which are represented in the advisory board.

Ellen J. Eftestøl is Professor of Civil and Commercial Law at the University of Helsinki. She holds a Doctor of Law degree from the University of Oslo and has been granted the title Docent of Civil Law  from the University of Helsinki. She is in charge of the InterTran Research Group for Sustainable Business and Law at the University of Helsinki. In addition she holds a part time position as Adjunct Professor at the Scandinavian Institute of Maritime Law, University of Oslo.

Her major subjects are European Commercial Agency Law (dissertation) and International Trade and Transport Law. She has published internationally on these topics. At present she teaches International Carriage of Goods, Nordic and European Contract Law, International Sales Law, Tort Law and International Private Law.  She has previously been teaching Legal Theory and Family Law. Her teaching languages are English, Swedish and Norwegian.

Email: ellen.eftestol(at)helsinki.fi

Dr. Anu Bask is a Senior Research Fellow at the Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Finland. Previously she has worked in several positions at the Aalto University School of Business. She serves as Director of logistics and business part of InterTran Research Group, and as Director of the Kataja's Finnish Graduate School of Logistics and Supply Chain Management.  She also serves as Senior Associate Editor (SAE) for International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management. 

Her research interests include service supply chains, supply chain relationships, modularity approach in services, sustainable supply chain management and sustainable transport. She has published over twenty-five articles in international refereed journals and a number of other publications. She has been a co-editor of a special issue of the International journal of Operations and Production Management, International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management and MarIus Periodical, and a reviewer for several international journals and conferences.  Her research has been published in Service Science, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, International Journal of Services and Operations Management, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, International Journal of Logistics Management, Journal of Transport Geography, among others.

Email: anu.bask(at)utu.fi

Suvi's research falls within the field of European Law. Her ongoing postdoctoral research project (funded by the Academy of Finland 2016-19) focuses on goods and studies potential concrete legal means - such as COO indications, consumer information, standardisation - for promoting overall welfare in Europe in a global age, and, in a more theoretical sense, (re-)connecting non-cosmopolitan transnational (generative) solidarity to the relationship between the European market and the Market citizen (consumer).

Suvi's prior, and also ongoing, research interests include judicial adjudication in general, in particular the preliminary reference procedure, and especially the legal reasoning of the Court of Justice. Especially how the Court's actions are, as those of any court, facilitated but also constrained by law, moreover, interpretation (both legal interpretation and scholarly (re-)interpretation of judgments) should always allow due consideration for (legal) context. The results of this research are collected in her monograph European Court of Justice Legal Reasoning in Context (Groningen: Europa Law Publishing, 2013).

Suvi Sankari is a member of the research project European Bonds: The Moral Economy of Debt, one founder-member of the newly established Nordic Network of legal empirical scholars ('No-Les-Law', funded by NOS-HS), and collaborates with InterTran Research Group for Sustainable Law and Business and a FiDiPro project on the External Dimension of European Private Law (EDEPL).

She was previously a Postdoctoral researcher of the Many Constitutions of Europe research project and worked (2011-13) in the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence 'The Foundations of European Law and Polity' 2008-2013.

Suvi Hirvonen-Ere is Doctor of Laws and a “pracademic”. She defended her doctoral dissertation “Contract Management Modus Operandi in the Post-Enron World” in June 2021 at the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki as an accomplishment of a long-term dream. Currently she is working on her second doctoral dissertation, “Sustainable Business via Contract and Commercial Management as a Leadership Strategy Instrument” at the Aalto University School of Business.

Before the academic doctoral dissertation projects, Suvi worked for nearly 20 years in key senior roles mainly in global corporations. She specialized in sustainable growth, strategy and transformation with a solid background in legal, commercial and contract management international practice. She is a frequent speaker in academic congresses and business events in Finland and abroad.

Suvi is an active member of the InterTran Research Group since the year 2016 and a member of HELSUS, the Helsinki Institute for Sustainability Science, and a member of the Aalto University Sustainability Hub. Her other organizations comprise of the global World Commerce and Contracting Association as well as the US-focused National Association for Contract and Commercial Management, as well as the Risk Management Association, the Project Management Association, the Association of Finnish Lawyers, and the International Standards Organization and the Finnish Standards Organization. She has contributed to the renewal of the global standard ISO 31000:2018 risk management standard, and in the creation of the ISO 31022:2018 the guideline for the management of legal risk as well as the forthcoming standard for the emerging risk.

Suvi publishes in English, Swedish and Finnish. “Contract Management – hanteringen av kontraktets livscykel” was published in 2018 in the Nordiska Förmögenhetsrättsdagarna 29, edited by Jan Kleineman; ”The Way of Business Contracts. How to promote (transport) sustainability and incentivize the green economy via Contract Management” in 2019 in “Sustainable and Efficient Transport”, edited by Ellen Eftestöl, Anu Bask and Suvi Sankari and published by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd (JUFO 2 level publisher); “Riskienhallinta ja liiketoiminnan jatkuvuus” [Risk Management and business resilience], co-author, edited by Janne Kalli and Lassi Väisänen, published by SFS in 2021; “Business contract design via Contract Management operationalized methodology” in “Research Handbook in Contract Design”, edited by Marcelo Corrales, Helena Haapio and Mark Fenwick, published  by Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd (JUFO 2); forthcoming in 2022. Together with a Contract Management practitioner Tony Alcock, Suvi has performed the Contract Management course in the Turku University, Faculty of Law, for five consecutive years, and during the two recent years, also in the Turku University School of Business. The course has continued as the highest ranking course based on the student feedback. Suvi has also lectured at the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki, and at the Hochschule van Amsterdam, as well as in the Helsinki University Plus (HY+) and Aalto University Executive Education for international business audiences.

Suvi’s research interests cover sustainability, contract and commercial management, supply chains, operations, strategy, leadership, contract tech, and she is also interested in the relationship between technology and humans and where the current development might take us.

Dr. Sini Laari is a postdoctoral researcher in the Operations & Supply Chain Management programme of Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku. Her primary field of research is sustainability in supply chains. She teaches sustainability and business games at the undergraduate level and supervises Master's and Doctoral theses.

Sini defended her doctoral thesis on the connection between firm performance and green supply chain management in University of Turku in 2016. After that, she worked 6 months at the Finnish Defence Research Agency focusing on future SCM trends. Since 2017 she has worked as a postdoctoral researcher in University of Turku.

She has published articles in the Journal of Cleaner Production, Business Strategy and the Environment, and Baltic Journal of Management, for example.

Dr. Lauri Ojala is Professor of Logistics and Chair at the Turku School of Economics, University of Turku, Finland, since 1997. Adjunct Professor of Logistics at Linköping University, Sweden, since 1996, and at National Defence University, Finland, since 2008. He is also Chairman of the Board of logscale oy, a supply chain compliance consultancy.  

His fields of expertise include international logistics, maritime and port economics and transport markets also from a policy-making perspective. Worked as an expert e.g. for The World Bank (WB), European Commission, Asian Development Bank, OECD, UNECE and UNIDO, as well as for Ministries of Transport of several countries. Initiator and co-author of WB’s biennial Logistics Performance Index  since 2007.

Since 2006, Project Director of five EU-projects with a combined volume of 16+ M€, incl. Baltic Sea Region projects HAZARD on Seaport Safety & Security in 2016-2019 and OIL SPILL on combatting coastal oil spills in 2018-2021. He heads also the biennial national Finnish Logistics Surveys since 2006 with up to 2,800 company responses in each; these comprise the largest national logistics survey database in the world; the next report will be published in late 2018.

Professor of Food Economics, University of Helsinki

Dr. Sadaat Ali Yawar is a Senior Lecturer and presently the programme leader for MSc Global Logistics, Operations and Supply Chain Management at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, in the Department of Marketing, Operations and Systems. He holds a MS degree in Environmental Protection and Agriculture Food Production from Hohenheim University in Germany and a MBA in International Business from Kassel University in Germany. He holds PhD in supply chain management from Kassel University, Germany. His areas of research include sustainable purchasing, supply chain management, sustainable supply chain management, global production networks, logistics management and blockchain technology. He has published in top international journals such as Journal of Business Ethics, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal, Journal of Purchasing and Supply Management and Journal of Cleaner Production, International Journal of Operations, and Production Management, Benchmarking: An international Journal. He is presently working with topics intersecting blockchain, supply chain management and sustainability, Circular economy and other related fields.

Dr. Yihong Zhang is a post-doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Law, University of Helsinki. She completed her doctoral study at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her areas of research include Chinese company law, securities regulation, employment law and law and society. She is also a member HELSUS.

Maximilian Huemer completed his Master of Laws degree in International Business Law at the University of Helsinki in 2019. He will continue his studies in Helsinki as a doctoral student. Maximilian currently works as a Research Assistant for the InterTran Research Group for Sustainable Law and Business. His main research interests are in transport law and consumer law, with a particular focus on sustainable transportation and passenger rights.

Maria Santamala is a Doctoral Candidate at University of Helsinki (2020). She graduated with master’s degree in law from a Russian state university in 2001 and from the University of Helsinki in 2014. She has been a practicing lawyer for over 20 years in various fields of law and working in industrial companies, including Wartsila and Valmet Automation in Finland. Currently, she is a legal director at a Finnish tech start-up Sensible 4 Oy. Her research focuses on the autonomous (self-driving) vehicles legal regulation, including aspects of the public transportation safety, defects liability, privacy.

Emilie (Master of Laws 2011, University of Helsinki) is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Helsinki where she is currently working on a PhD on emissions trading at the intersection of climate law and financial markets regulation and the legal architecture of EU’s carbon market. Prior to joining the University of Helsinki in February 2017 she worked several years with innovative climate finance initiatives and emissions trading. Emilie has e.g. worked as legal counsel for the Nordic Environment Finance Corporation’s carbon funds and as legal adviser at the Finnish Energy Authority responsible for the implementation of the European emissions trading scheme in Finland. Emilie is one of the authors of the report “Sectoral expansion of the EU ETS- A Nordic perspective on barriers and solutions to include new sectors in the EU ETS with special focus on road transport” financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers.