People

Associate Professor, group leader

Sirkku is an associate professor of urban environmental policy at the Department of Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki and the leader of our multidisciplinary research group Urban Environmental Policy. She is also a guest professor at the Centre for Climate Science and Policy Research, Linköping University in Sweden. Her area of expertise is environmental and adaptation policy, in cities in particular. She is interested in bringing different fields together to understand challenges associated with sustainability in cities. She is interested in theoretical and conceptual development, linked to methodological development.

She has led research projects in both developed and developing countries and she has been a deputy chief scientist of the Nordic Centre of Excellence on Adaptation Research (NORD-STAR) and spent four years (2 as vice-chair) in the Climate Panel of Finland, a scientific organisation to advice the Finnish Government on climate policy. She is also a member of Future Earth Finland core group.

Post-doctoral researcher

I have been employed in University of Helsinki as a postdoc since April 2015. During my postdoc, I have had two research tracks: (1) resilience, vulnerability and adaptation research, and (2) remote sensing. I was employed in UEP research group between April 2015 and December 2016, and I mostly focused in analyzing water-related changes, risks and vulnerabilities. Currently, I am involved in UEP group activities but I am employed by two other research groups. In the University of Helsinki, my research includes remote sensing analyses as well as land cover and vegetation mapping in the Arctic. My other half is working in the Norwegian University of Science and Technology. This work includes qualitative research on community resilience.

Before starting my postdoctoral research, I studied in the University of Jyväskylä and ended up with one Doctoral degree (Environmental Science) and two Master’s degrees (Social and Public Policy and Environmental Science). In my PhD, I carried out remote sensing analyses in boreal forests and assessed their conservation values.

Post-doctoral researcher

Paula is a postdoctoral researcher, and even though with a PhD in environmental policy (University of Helsinki, 2008), she is usually labelled an environmental historian. Her recent research has focused on watery topics, including river histories and the restoration of aquatic environments. The geographical emphasis of her research covers mainly Finland and especially Helsinki, and the Baltic Sea Region.

In her current project titled “White infrastructures – an environmental history ice” she has turned to the solid form of water. She investigates how ice was commodified to provide controlled coldness to an urbanizing society and how ice based cold infrastructures of the 19^th and early 20^th century shaped the modernizing urban fabric and its hygienic transformation, the material realities of coldness, and human interactions with their natural waters.

You can read more about Paula and her research from her own webpage.

Post-doctoral researcher

Anna Salomaa’s research interest is in interactions between knowledge, policy and practise to solve environmental problems. Her PhD (2014-2017) studies these interactions focusing on actors’ roles and perceptions in increasing nature conservation effectiveness.

Anna joined UEP group in the autumn 2017 to work in the project Urban Sustainability Transformations - Examining the Eco-Viikki residential area. During the year 2018 she will work in this project full time.

She holds Master’s degree in Environmental change and policy from the University of Helsinki and Master’s degree in Ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Jyväskylä. She has worked in various research projects, addressing e.g. adaptation to climate change, grass photosynthesis database, voluntary conservation, connectivity and legitimacy, operationalization of ecosystem services and knowledge and communication in conservation.

Post-doctoral researcher

Johannes Klein’s research focuses on climate change adaptation at the local and regional level. He has contributed to numerous scientific and applied research projects in Europe addressing risk assessment, climate change adaptation and spatial planning. He works as a researcher at the Geological Survey of Finland. He holds a PhD in the field of spatial planning and transportation engineering from the Department of Built Environment at Aalto University (FI). His PhD dissertation was about urban planning and adaptation in Northern Europe.

His current research topic is the role of citizens and the private sector in urban adaptation. A special focus is on cities’ steering instruments and the distribution of responsibilities between the public sector and private actors. The research on the topic includes case studies in Helsinki, Copenhagen, and New York City, as well as a research visit at McGill University, Montreal (CA). For publications, see Johannes' page at Aalto University.

Doctoral Candidate

Alexandra Jurgilevich joined the UEP group as a doctoral student in the beginning of 2015. Her research focuses on climate change risks in the urban context, particularly on the future risks, dynamic interactions between the drivers, and socio-economic changes. She is integrating quantitative and qualitative methods of climate risk mapping, such as mapping of hazard projections and participatory mapping of socio-economic and land-use changes, in order to take into account future dynamic interaction of climate risk drivers. The research project is carried out at the case of Helsinki. Alexandra’s broader research interests include urban context, climate risk and vulnerability, socio-economic vulnerability, adaptation and climate policy.

Alexandra holds Master’s degree in European studies, focusing on European policy and law, as well as Specialist degree in international economic relations.

Doctoral Candidate

Fanny joined the UEP group in the beginning of 2016 as a PhD student. Her research is focused on cross-border impacts of climate change on energy systems of the Nordic countries. She is applying a supply chain risk assessment methodology, and is currently preparing an article on cross-border impacts on bioenergy supply in Finland and Sweden. She is broadly interested in climate and energy policy, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and well as renewable energy and future energy systems.

Fanny holds an MSc in Environmental Sciences from University of Turku and a BSc in Biology from the Åbo Akademi University. She did her Master’s thesis on climate policies of oil producing countries with case studies from Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Ecuador. Previously, Fanny has worked as a researcher in the Climate Change Programme at the Finnish Environment Institute, and as an intern in the Species Programme at the UNEP-WCMC in Cambridge, UK.

Doctoral Candidate

Milja joined UEP group on spring 2016. Her PhD project is about the role of cooperation networks in urban climate change mitigation and adaptation. She is interested in both global and local level networks. The first two articles of her thesis are going to be about global networks. In the becoming articles, her aim is to move to local level and analyse the cooperation related to climate change mitigation in Madrid, Stockholm and Helsinki.

Milja holds MSc in Environmental Science and Policy and BA in Spanish Philology, both from the University of Helsinki. During her MSc studies, she worked as a research assistant for Paula Schönach in multidisciplinary research project ”AQUADIGM- The function and management of aquatic ecosystems in the changing environment: the effects of paradigm shifts”. Before AQUADIGM, she worked as a research assistant in City of Helsinki Environment centre measuring the City Biodiversity Index in the context of Helsinki.

Topic of her Master’s Thesis was the politicization of wastewater overflows in the region of the Vantaa River. A research article based on it was published in the journal Water Policy.

Doctoral Candidate

Doctoral Candidate

With climate change adaptation as her current research theme, Janina Käyhkö examines adaptation decision-making and the potential maladaptation in Nordic agriculture in her doctoral thesis. She has been part of the UEP-group since the beginning of 2018. She uses interviews, stakeholder discussions and serious gaming to approach actor’s perceptions of risk and the implications of adaptation decision making.

She has previously worked as a research assistant in Aalto University (Department of Built Environment) and in Linköping University (Department of Thematic Studies, TEMA: Environmental Change) with a Nordic FORMAS research project on thresholds for maladaptation, using participatory methodologies and framework analysis, as well as developing visualization supported gaming workshops for research and policy analysis.

Janina qualified as an MSc in the degree program of Environmental Change and Policy in the University of Helsinki in autumn 2017 with an interdisciplinary curriculum and minors in environmental policy, agroecology and teacher’s pedagogical studies in adult education. Her broader research interest in sustainability transformations, especially on food-production, and participatory methodology has led her to her current research.

Doctoral Candidate

Linda Karjalainen joined UEP as a doctoral student in 2018. Her PhD project is positioned to study and structure the broad concept of urban transportation sustainability alongside the related policies in Helsinki, Stockholm and Oslo. The research project is set to refine existing methodological tools for transportation policy assessments by pursuing a stronger connection between policy and its intended impact, without losing the integrated understanding of sustainability. Methodologically, the research moves from the decision-making and policy level through key measures and central initiatives on to the individual user level, combining qualitative and quantitative analysis.

In addition to urban transportation, Linda’s research interests include the wider theme of urban sustainability and resilience planning, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and urban philosophy. She holds an MSc in Environmental change and policy from the University of Helsinki.

Anders Backström: The impact of the city structure on the travel lenghts and transportation modes in Helsinki

Heidi Blom: Ilmastokumppanit-verkosto ja kaupunkitason ilmastopolitiikka

Eevi Laukkonen: Paikkaidentiteetti ja ympäristöystävällinen käyttäytyminen ekokaupunginosassa: case Eko-Viikki (KEMUT project)

Jenni Nieminen: The effect of policy instruments in the transition towards a sustainable neighbourhood -case Eko-Viikki (KEMUT project)