Lena Näre is Professor of Sociology at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She holds a DPhil in Migration Studies from the University of Sussex, UK and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Helsinki, Finland. Her research focuses on migration, asylum, transnationalism, ageing, care work and precarity. Her research has been published in Sociology, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Citizenship Studies, Journal of European Social Policy, among others. Her recent books include Care Loops and Mobilities in Nordic, Central, and Eastern European Welfare States (Palgrave, 2022), co-edited volume with Lise Isaksen, and The Politics of Ailment: A New Approach to Care co-authored with Minna Zechner, Olli Karsio, Antero Olakivi, Liina Sointu, Hanna-Kaisa Hoppania and Tiina Vaittinen for Policy Press in 2022. She is currently leading a research project ’Tackling Precarious and Informal Work in the Nordic countries’ (PrecaNord, 2022-2026) funded by Future Challenges in the Nordics programme. She is also a partner in a Horizon project ‘Improving the living and labour conditions of irregularised migrant households in Europe’ (I-Claim, 2023-2025) funded by the European Commission. She is vice-chair of Nordic Sociological Association and Associate Editor of Global Social Challenges Journal (Bristol University Press). She served as Editor-in-Chief of Nordic Journal of Migration Research in 2012-2022 (Helsinki University Press).
Olivia Maury is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. Her research stretches across the fields of critical migration studies, socio-legal studies, and the sociology of work, focusing on how the digitisation of society impacts labour-migration, generates new tensions between migrants’ subjective desires and capitalist value accumulation. Olivia’s research has been published in journals such as Work, Employment and Society, Sociology, Current Sociology and The Nordic Journal of Migration Research. Olivia received her doctoral degree from the Faculty of Social Sciences of the University of Helsinki in 2021.
Ann Cathrin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen. Her research interests center migration; informal and precarious work; gender; and immigrant entrepreneurship. In 2021, she earned a PhD in Latin American Studies from the University of Bergen. Ann Cathrin relies on in-depth interviews and ethnographic research methods to understand people’s everyday lives, experiences, and aspirations, as well as their economic actions, in relation to broader social and historical forces. She has conducted fieldwork in countries as distinct as Peru, the United States, and Norway. Her work is interdisciplinary but mainly informed by readings in anthropology, sociology, history, and gender studies.
Synnøve Bendixsen is Professor and Head of Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway. She has a PhD from École des hautes études en sciences sociales and Humboldt Universitet (co-tutelle). Bendixsen has conducted research on refugees and irregular migrants in Norway, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, on young Muslims and religiosity in Germany and on parenting practices in Norway. Her research focus is on questions of marginalization processes, border constructions, urban life and diversity. Bendixsen has written several journal articles, book chapters and co-edited books on these topics, including the co-edited volumes Contested Hospitalities in a Time of Migration (with Trygve Wyller, 2019, Routledge) and Egalitarianism in Scandinavia: Historical and Contemporary Approaches (with Mary Bente Bringslid and Halvard Vike, 2018, Palgrave). She is currently partner in the research project ‘Tackling Precarious and Informal Work in the Nordic countries’ (PrecaNord, 2022-2026) funded by Future Challenges in the Nordics programme. Bendixsen is also a WP leader in the project ‘On Equal Grounds? Migrant Women’s Participation in Labour and Labour Related Activities’ (EQUALPART, 2021-2025), funded by the Norwegian Research Council. She is the series co-editor (with Bjørn Bertelsen) for the Palgrave Macmillan series Approaches to Social Inequality and Difference. Bendixsen served as co-editor (with Lena Näre) of Nordic Journal of Migration Research in 2012-2021 (Helsinki University Press).
Sara Eldén is Phd and Associate Professor of Sociology at Lund University, Sweden. Her research focuses care and care work, family, generation and children. She has published articles and book chapters with in a broad range of journals and publishers, and her recent books include Nanny families: practices of care by nannies, au pairs, parents and children in Sweden (Bristol University Press) co-authored with Terese Anving, and Forskningsetik: Vägval i samhällsvetenskapliga studier (Studentlitteratur). She is currently leading the Swedish part of the project Tackling Precarious and Informal Work in the Nordic countries (PrecaNord, 2022-2026) funded by Future Challenges in the Nordics programme. In addition, she is PI of the project Intergenerational Care (Swedish Research Council, 2018-01053), and is also co-researcher in the project RUT tax deductions for the elderly: New conditions for care practices (PI Anving, Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and Welfare, 2022-00566). She is co-editor of the journal Families, Relationships and Societies, (Bristol University Press), and also co-editor of two book series: Palgrave Macmillan Studies in Family and Intimate Life (Palgrave Macmillan), and Greppbar metod (Studentlitteratur). She served as editor-in-chief of Sociologisk Forskning 2017-2019 (Swedish Sociological Association). She is currently chair of the Swedish research council review board for Sociology, Social Anthropology and Social work.
Markus Jäntti is a Professor of Economics at Stockholm University and holds a PhD in economics from Åbo Akademi University in Finland. His research focuses on the importance of family background for adult economic outcomes and on income distribution and poverty, often in a comparative perspective. His work on child poverty and children’s economic outcomes in rich countries often examine parental labour force attachment and lack thereof. He had co-edited two comparative volumes on cross-national differences, with Janet C Gornick in 2013 “Income Inequality: Economic Disparities and the Middle Class in Affluent Countries” (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press) and with John Ermisch and Timothy Smeeding in 2012 “From Parents to Children: The Intergenerational Transmission of Advantage” (New York: Russell Sage Foundation). He chaired of a recent commission, appointed by the Finnish Minister of Labour, charged with examining research-based way to increase labour force participation in Finland. He is currently the director of the Swedish Institute for Social Research at Stockholm University.
Rasmus Ahlstrand is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Sociology at Lund University. His research interests include labour studies and the sociology of work and focuses primarily on labour regimes, labour process and precarious work. In his previous research, he studied new forms of work organisation in the Swedish building sector, and in his dissertation, he shows how the Swedish building sector is undergoing a structural transformation as large parts of production are externalised and both major and minor firms rely heavily on subcontractors. Key to this process is how building companies have moved from recruiting cheap labour from abroad as additional labour power, to replacing a directly employed workforce with cheap subcontracted labour from abroad.
In addition, he has teaching experience from a variety of courses in sociology and is currently involved in primarily the Human Resource programmes on both undergraduate and graduate level.
Petter Korkman is a documentarist and knowledge activist at Cultural Factory of Knowledge Sharing (Tiedonjulkistamisen kulttuuritehdas ry, also known as TIUKU). Korkman works with several international research project to help bring art and multimedia into both the research setup and the broadcasting of key results. Korkman has experience from music and audio productions, filming and editing, planning and leading art workshops as well as from administrating and leading projects. Korkman holds a PhD in philosophy (Åbo Akademi 2001) and has well over ten years of experience of academic research, including almost ten years at the prestigious Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (Helsinki University). Korkman works or has worked as a “camera and arts -quipped” co-researcher in e.g. All-Youth (Finnish Academy, project leader Päivi Honkatukia), Drawing Together (Nordforsk, project leader Ravi Kohli) and Digital Death (European CHANSE consortium, project leader Johanna Sumiala). Korkman strives to expand his own and other people’s understanding of the role(s) that art can have in research and research communication through TIUKU, where he works as coordinator and project leader (www.tiuku.org). Korkman also runs a songwriting programme for young people (www.gsonglab.fi).
Elisabeth Wide is a PhD researcher at the Faculty of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. She is finalising her doctoral dissertation on migrant care and domestic work, which analyses the formation of class and the contradictions pertaining to "free"/unfree labour from the perspective of live-in reproductive labour, while connecting outsourced reproductive labour to the relations of production. Her research interests include social reproduction, class theorisation, and the sociology of work. Elisabeth’s research has been published in NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, Journal of European Social Policy and Poliittinen talous.