I work as a doctoral researcher with research topics related to sustainable food systems. I have worked on research projects focusing on the sustainability of dairy system (Climate-Smart Dairy), public food services (StratKIT+) and resilience of South Ostrobothnian food companies (YDIRE). In my PhD research I focus on the construction of sustainability meanings and organizational sustainability communication in Finnish food and cosmetics companies.
In addition to the research projects, I coordinate the NKJ Research Network between the Nordic and Baltic countries and work as in the coordination team for the annual Food Days event in Seinäjoki. My background is in food sciences with focus on food economics and consumption.
I’m a doctoral researcher who, next to the scientific work, enjoys cross-border networking and international cooperation. My current scientific interests start with demographic changes, especially those in rural areas of Finland, and via provision of public services (meals), reach up to the sustainable food chains as whole.
I have a wide experience in project application writing in various funding programmes e.g. Horizon, Interreg, EIT, and many others. I’ve co-created the Sustainable Public Meal Toolkit via StratKIT project funded by InterregBSR. I’m eagerly learning Finnish hoping to reach advanced level.
I work at the intersection of agriculture and social sciences in farming and I am especially interested in farmer-centred social research for building sustainable agrifood systems. I have studied agroecology at University of Helsinki and sustainable agriculture and development studies at Hampshire College, USA. I hold a DSc in Agriculture and Forestry.
My research topics include qualitative stakeholder research for biodiversity outcomes, policy mechanisms such as results-based payments, pollinator-friendly farming, and semi-natural grasslands and other high nature value farming.
During 2023-2026, I am working in BioMonitor4CAP, a Horizon Europe project, where I am a co-leader of the social sciences workpackage aiming to improve the social-economic acceptability of biodiversity measures. I am a vice-chair of Cultural Landscapes Association, Finland.
I am a social scientist interested in rural immigration. I have a Master's degree in political history, but nowadays I study phenomena related to rural migration from a sociological perspective.
In my doctoral dissertation, I study how immigrants' experiences of belonging in rural local communities are built. I am interested in integration issues and how social, structural and political factors in local communities affect the formation of immigrants' experiences of belonging.
I am currently leading a 5-year research on Innovation and entrepreneurship towards a sustainable transition of the food system. I am also leading GENGREEN, an Interreg Aurora sponsored project on female green entrepreneurship across Finland, Sweden and Norway and a NKJ sponsored project entitled A Nordic Baltic framework for sustainable food systems.
I’m involved in international and national projects related to Nordic food systems and food entrepreneurship and teaching a course on "Food entrepreneurship, sustainability and innovation in Africa and in the Nordics" in the framework of UNIPID, the Finnish University Partnership for International Development.
I’m also one of the organizers of Food Days, a yearly event aiming to raise awareness on food innovations in Finland and at supporting the Nordic entrepreneurial culture. I’m a member of UNA EUROPA Self Steering Commitee on Sustainability.
My research focuses on the regional economic impacts of various phenomena. In the RegFin team, I have been involved in assessing the impacts of local food, renewable energy, transport solutions, tourism and climate change on regional economies and employment. In addition, I work in projects promoting rural policy and supporting entrepreneurship.
I am a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme in Sustainable Use of Renewable Natural Resources (AGFOREE). In my doctoral dissertation, I study how sustainability change in consumer behaviour affects regional economies and emissions that cause climate change. I have two master's degrees, one in Economics and Business Administration, and the other in Agriculture and Forestry.
My research and teaching are in field of agroecology as sustainability science looking at farming and food systems. With my research group, we have recently been working with networks of agroecological symbioses (NAES), which is a proposal for transformation in food system, with recycling of plant nutrients for use as organic fertilizers, with monitoring of species diversity in agricultural landscapes, and with controlling of weeds without herbicides.
I have MSc in agricultural zoology and crop science, and degree of doctor in agricultural zoology. Since 1996 I have been working as professor of agroecology, the tenure ending with full years of service in 2024, University of Helsinki. I’m working as a program director of Strategic Research program FOOD (closing 2025). I’m supervising several PhD students in agroecology and sustainability science.
I work on the development of organic education and research in the coordination group of the Finnish Organic Research Institute. I hold a Ph.D. in Agricultural Sciences (Animal Science and biotechnology).
My areas of expertise include laboratory methods for studying the metabolism of fatty acids and the formation of methane in the cow's rumen. I have also been involved in developing a laboratory method to authenticate organic milk. My great passion is the development of digital education and a new curriculum at the university.
I am an educationalist working on various local and regional education projects with a pedagogical planner title. Previously I have worked for a long time with the planning and implementation of online teaching and with the coordination of the cooperative university network. I am particularly interested in the possibilities of entrepreneurship education, adult education and new kinds of learning environments.
I am also a doctoral student at the Department of Teacher Education at the Faculty of Education of the University of Turku, doing research on teachers' own learning when they work with cooperative student entrepreneurship.
I am a human geographer specialising in rural issues and a docent in regional studies. My academic interest is people as creative agents and societal actors. In practice, in different rural contexts, this has meant researching, evaluating and developing methodologies for local development agencies and policies. Currently, my work focuses on municipalities as institutions, organisations and spatial identity communities. As place-based actors, I see municipalities as having a vital future role both in maintaining the vitality of rural areas and, more broadly, in the fair implementation of the sustainability transition.
My research, which began at the University of Tampere in 1986, ended up to a doctoral dissertation in regional science in 1994. After a research period in Japan, I moved to the University of Helsinki in 1996. I have been Research Director at Ruralia since 2001. I have participated in national rural policy forums and actively developed rural university education (Rural Studies) as well as research and publication activities in the field (Finnish Journal of Rural Studies).
I am the deputy director of the institute and lead the multidisciplinary research group "Regional Development, Place and Sustainable Development".
I am a researcher of politics and history and an business economist who has worked as an expert and project manager in research and development projects related to rural areas since 2006. I take an active part in the planning and implementation of our institute's teaching activities.
My areas of expertise include the relationship between rural and urban, rural and world politics, the development of rural livelihoods, and regional and natural resource history. In addition to the EU Member States, my international cooperation has focused on e.g. Japan and Turkey. I held the position of editor-in-chief of the magazine Maaseudun uusi aika during 2016–2018. Currently, I am the vice-president of The Finnish Society for Rural Research and Development.
I work as a project manager and have worked in rural development for quite a long time. For the past ten years, my field of work has been in development of food industry which aims to promote entrepreneurship in the sector. Relating to the theme, food tourism is the latest topic. My particular interest is entrepreneurship and I have previously worked on educational projects in that field, among other things.
My background is in economics. Interaction in a multidisciplinary work community gives me a lot of inspiration for new perspectives and approaches to rural development, which motivates and encourages me to find out viewpoints that are new and unfamiliar to me.
I am an environmental social scientist with a background in critical organization and management studies. I am a Doctor of Science in economics and business administration. My research focuses on sustainable food economies, farming livelihoods, more-than-human relations, and invisible work in farming landscapes.
I have developed a course on Corporate Responsibility in Global Economy based on dialogic methods, and tought Sustainable and Diverse Economies for over a decade in different universities in Finland. I have published in several different journals and edited book collections, held conference workshops, and acted as a reviewer in well-ranked academic journals and as an editor of a special issue. I have led several projects, including a post-doctoral project funded by the Finnish Research Council and acted as a PI for KONE founded projects.
My research is based on an ethnographic approach, and my emerging research interests include multi-sensory research methods and alternative methodologies for knowledge production and forms of representing science. I am also a founding member of the Untame research collective and a scriptwriter and a host for the Untame science podcast, a blog-writer, a beginning forest gardener, and a mother.
I work as a project manager in the KUMU project, which examines the strategic positioning of municipalities in South Savo in relation to the sustainability transition. I am also a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal, and Regional Change (PSRC). In my dissertation, I study regions struggling with the challenges caused by population decline. My research aims to understand the complex and multidimensional impacts of this development on real estate markets. In addition, my dissertation addresses the opportunities and challenges related to the sustainability transition in such shrinking regions. I hold a Master of Science (Technology) in Real Estate Economics from Aalto University and a Master of Science in Planning Geography from the University of Helsinki.
I am a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme in Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences (DENVI) and I study perceptions on biodiversity among agricultural stakeholders, such as farmers. In my research I also examine how biodiversity is part of agricultural business. I am interested in the possibilities for agribusiness to support and integrate biodiversity into their operations.
I have graduated from the Faculty of Biological and Environmental Sciences at the University of Helsinki. In my Master's thesis, I studied how chemical industry companies report on biodiversity.
I work in various development and research roles related to the tourism industry, in close collaboration with small tourism businesses. My areas of interest include developing small tourism enterprises, product development and storytelling. I have developed a "Product and Story" training program for entrepreneurs.
I have led multiple tourism projects, such as Responsible cross-border history-based tourism Gustav III – Sprengtporten – Catherina II, which developed historical tourism, and Tikkutollosta tuotteeksi, which established sustainable rural tourism models, as well as D.O.Saimaa, promoting the Saimaa region's food tourism by leveraging local ingredients and culture.
I am a geographer by education and hold a PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Eastern Finland (Joensuu).
I work as a postdoctoral researcher, and my work focuses on how farming and food systems can be transformed to utilize local resources in a more sustainable manner. An example of a local food production system based on circular economy principles is the model of agroecological symbiosis that we have developed. In addition, I am interested in how food production is linked to regional and national food systems, as well as to the global food system. I also work part-time in the coordination group of the Finnish Organic Research Institute.
My background is in agroecology. Since 2020, I have been involved in various projects related to the sustainability of food production at Ruralia.
My research focuses especially on the regional economic impacts of various activities and changes. In the RegFin team, I carry out regional economic impact assessments on a wide range of themes. The evaluations have covered, for example, the effects of the use of local food, sustainability changes of the food system, renewable energy, transport solutions, tourism and forestry on the economy and employment of regions of different sizes. In addition, I am involved in rural policy network that supports the vitality of rural areas.
I am particularly interested in the regional economic impacts and regional differences of sustainability changes. I am a Doctor of Administrative Science with a focus on regional studies. In my work, I use especially multi-sectoral and multi-regional computable general equilibrium models called RegFin and RegFinDyn.
I am a social scientist with a master's degree in political science, whose focus is the role of sports clubs in rural development. In my dissertation, I study the development of successful sports clubs in a Finnish rural context and aim to describe the motivations and perceptions of key stakeholders about the impact of the existence and success of a sports team on the development of the locality.
In addition to my academic work, I have actively contributed to the implementation of different regional education and development projects within the food sector.
I get excited about multidisciplinarity at the interfaces of natural sciences and human sciences. From my academic roots, I am an evolutionary ecologist and docent in landscape ecology, but since then my thinking has been inspired especially by regional science, sustainability science and environmental research in the social sciences. I am particularly interested in people's conscious and unconscious behaviour in the sustainability transition and the related renewal of rural entrepreneurship.
I am the director of Ruralia. I am involved in the strategic development of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry and in many networks (e.g. HELSUS, UniPID, Rural Policy Council, University Consortium of Seinäjoki). I supervise doctoral dissertations at the University of Helsinki in the PSRC, DENVI and AGFOREE doctoral programmes.
My field is agroecology and I have a master's degree in agriculture and forestry. Topics related to my work include the environmental sustainability of primary agricultural production and the diversity of the agricultural landscapes.
I am doing doctoral research in the Doctoral Programme in Sustainable Use of Renewable Natural Resources (AGFOREE). In my doctoral thesis, I study the development targets of Finnish organic production from the perspective of regenerative agriculture.
My educational background is in sociology and business studies, and I work on research and development projects related to rural entrepreneurship. I am particularly interested in issues related to corporate social responsibility among small rural businesses, the relationships between businesses and local communities, and (community-based) social entrepreneurship. In addition, I study the ownership feelings in the context of forest ownership and business relationships within food supply chains.
My research has been published in several international journals focused on rural studies, organizational studies, and forestry. I am also a member of the editorial board of the Finnish Journal of Rural Studies and serve as a doctoral supervisor in the PSRC doctoral programme.
We farmers are in a fortunate position because we can easily make solutions that enhance the well-being of our environment on the land we manage. My goal as a researcher is to make it easy, rewarding, and profitable.
As well as being a farmer on a crop farm in southern Finland, I am also an agronomist and a PhD researcher. My main subject at the University of Helsinki during my studies was plant pathology. Now, my research gives me a glimpse into farmers' lives and decision-making processes, especially from the perspective of plant protection, but also from the perspective of ecologically and economically sustainable crop production. I do interdisciplinary research, where the natural scientist dives into the deep end of the social sciences and a data-driven qualitative approach. I experience myself as a link between research and farmers, a voice that belongs to both groups and consciously tries to eliminate confrontations.
At Ruralia, I am a second researcher in the CONSERWA social science work package. I assist Toni Ryynänen and lead the farm work package in Finland.
I work at Ruralia as a research coordinator. My work mainly consists of implementing various regional, national and international research and development projects and funding application processes related to these. My research interests relate to the sustainable use of natural resources and social sustainability in this context. For example, my doctoral thesis dealt with psychological ownership related to forests and natural resources.
My current research themes include topics such as forest owner research, sustainable rural tourism (including hunting tourism), utilisation of non-wood forest products, conflicts related to the multiple use of forests, and nature-based entrepreneurship. In addition, I have worked in development projects related to social entrepreneurship and Green Care activities.
I have a PhD in Forestry and I am also involved in the activities of the University of Helsinki's Institute for Sustainability Science (HELSUS). In addition, I am a board member of the Regional Forest Council and the Finnish Nature Entrepreneurship Network.
I’m interested in topics related to the well-being of people and nature. In development and teaching projects, I have had the opportunity to work with organic agriculture and food economy, the well-being effects of nature (Green Care), cooperation with educational companies, competence development and local food systems, such as community supported agriculture. It would be interesting to delve deeper into forest gardens, the well-being effects of handicrafts and the themes of self-sufficiency.
I have a master's degree in agriculture and forestry (horticultural science) and I’m also a textile artisan. I have worked at Ruralia since 2001.
At the moment I am on a job alternation leave until 26.1.2025.
I work as a doctoral researcher especially on traditional construction and Ostrobothnian peasant houses. In addition to cultural heritage values, I am particularly interested in the ecology of the old buildings and sustainable construction methods. I have studied ethnology and musicology, and one of my fields of activity is folk music, as I grew up in the fiddle tradition in Kaustinen. In our research group, I mainly work in various cultural heritage projects, which are often related to old buildings.
Among the publications, one can mention the book Great Ostrobothnian peasant houses, written together with Sulevi Riukulehto, which deals with the Ostrobothnian peasant house tradition and their value base. My future interests include promoting the use and appreciation of the old buildings through knowledge. Solutions for ecological construction can be found in the time when ecological construction was carried out.
I am a historian interested in rural cultural heritage and environmental history. I have graduated with a master's degree in philosophy from the subject of general history. At Ruralia, I have been involved in compiling village and municipality histories (Ilmajoki, Kuortane, Seinäjoki, Myllymäki), implemented development projects related to the built environment and concentrated on historical tourism.
A growing research trend at Ruralia is to examine the history of the use of natural resources. We are starting research on the history of peat production in South Ostrobothnia. We investigate the importance of peat production for peat producers and small rural communities, primarily through experiences and a sense of belonging.
I work with education and continuous learning. My work includes planning, implementing and managing educational projects as well as strategic development of teaching. Part of my work is also to develop learning solutions, services and processes that serve the needs of learners, working life and the region in cooperation with various networks. I am particularly interested in working life cooperation in teaching and the development of its operating models.
I have a Master's degree in Education. I am responsible for coordinating and developing the teaching and training activities of our institute. I am a member of the Education Committee of the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry, the education group of the University Consortium of Seinäjoki and the board of the Etelä-Pohjanmaan korkeakouluyhdistys. In these roles, I get to follow higher education from many perspectives.
I work as a project manager and rural development expert, with a focus on network projects. In recent years, I have been involved in RDI activities within the food industry and food systems. Additionally, I collaborate with the Mikkeli University Consortium to promote partnerships between students and businesses, fostering connections to working life in the South Savo region. My educational background is in geography, and I have also completed teacher training.
I bring diverse experience in place-based development, particularly through the EU’s LEADER approach. My experience spans research, evaluation assignments, as well as administration and practical implementation. My interest in both local and global development has led me to fieldwork in rural areas of sub-Saharan Africa. I am broadly interested in sustainability issues and the dynamics of people and communities in rural regions.
I am a geographer who has worked for a longtime in various research and development tasks related to rural and regional development.In recent years, I have focused on studying multi-locality from the perspective of regional development, especially from the perspectives of agency and place relationship of multi-local residents. Multi-locality is a phenomenon of which significance has continuously grown in Finland. It also makes possible to understand the regional development dynamics broadly.
In practice, I have carried out various research and development projects together with domestic and international partners. Many of the projects relate to multi-locality as a link between rural and urban areas. I am open to cooperation with various actors in this area.
I identify as a rural researcher with a background in public administration. My special research interest lies in local communities, focusing primarily on social economy and social entrepreneurship, experiential research of home, and multi-location living.
My recent research themes have included supporting and developing service production in rural communities through community-based social entrepreneurship, the construction of home, and the concept of multi-locality within the context of municipal citizenship, which is also the subject of my doctoral dissertation.
I have been leading the temporal research of rural regions at Ruralia since 2011. In regional history, the focus is on the phenomena and structures related to regions instead of national level – i. e. historical research where regions and borders have a particular meaning. The study of cultural heritage encompasses the entire spectrum of tangible and intangible rural culture, such as language, music, buildings, arts, ways of life, traditions, and beliefs. My research group has accomplished a lot of R&D projects related to rural housing and home as experiential phenomenon.
Regional history and cultural heritage are combined in the research line of home and hominess. Since 2004, I have systematically aimed at constructing an experiential theory of home. At Ruralia, my group has accomplished numerous case studies developing the theory, concepts, and methods of the research line.
My own research career begun in the 1990s from the field of economic history, concerning such questions as luxury, waste, and conspicuous consumption. In unison with this, the subject of my associate professorship at the University of Jyväskylä is the doctrine history of economic ideas.
Currently, the most important intellectual forum for me is the International Society for Regional History, ISRH, for which I have been the vice president since 2021. I am also an Extraordinary Professor of social transformation at the North-West University in South Africa.
I am a consumer economist (D. Sc.) and hold a title of docent in Consumer Economics. I lead a research group ”Human in Digital and Sustainable Economies”, which combines examination of experiences and perception of human beings from their perspective to broadly understood the challenges of the twin transition. As a social science and humanities researcher with a notable qualitative orientation, I often use a wide and variable set of approaches, research methods and data.
Research projects have been associated with three major themes: the social and societal meanings of cellular agriculture, the perceptions of stakeholders in the food system challenges and use of digitalisation in regional development. I also supervise dissertations in three doctoral programmes (PSRC, DENVI and AGFOREE).
My work focuses on smart water management, integrating IoT sensors and digital twin technologies for environmental monitoring. With a Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, I specialize in sensor optimization and separation science. I’m particularly interested in applying the principles of the circular economy to water management.
Passionate about addressing climate change, I advocate for a holistic approach, using multiparameter solutions to tackle this global issue. Diverse community engagement is crucial in my approach to creating harmony between people with different skills and mindsets, AI and technology development and adopting the technology in society. I’m dedicated to developing innovative, sustainable solutions that enhance the efficiency of water systems and contribute to a more sustainable planet.
My main field of study is multidisciplinary rural studies. I have background in regional studies, which is why I look at rural areas from the viewpoint of economic and human geography and administrative sciences. The development of rural areas has been at the heart of numerous research, development, and evaluation projects I have been involved in.
During the more than 20 years I have spent at the Ruralia Institute, the range of research phenomena has varied from research on regional cultural activities to the social responsibility of small businesses and the study of people's belonging and the construction of feeling at home.
My special interests include the functioning of knowledge communities, the third mission and regional impact of universities as well as cultural representations of rurality. I actively participate in the planning and implementation of the Institute's teaching activities.
I am an economist interested in the phenomena of food production and entrepreneurship. Since 2005, I have worked as a specialist in various research and development projects related to entrepreneurship and agriculture. Research themes have particularly included managing business relationships within the food chain, entrepreneurship identities, farm entrepreneurship, strategic management, future food, short supply chains, local food, and community supported agriculture (CSA). I have developed, among other things, business resilience, digitalization, and customer orientation.
My doctoral research examines the effects of entrepreneurship identity, psychological ownership, and trust in asymmetric business relationships within the food chain. I am interested in how different identities and ownerships are reflected in entrepreneurs' decisions. In this era, the transformation of the food system and sustainable development create an interesting and challenging context for research.
Our research concentrates on infectious diseases caused by human important pathogenic bacteria, and on other serious infections such as malaria and COVID-19. Our objectives are to investigate anti-infective properties and other health impacts of the natural products. The research is directed especially to milk, berries, honey, herbs, and their bioactive ingredients. For anti-infectivity we elucidate both anti-adhesive and antibiotic effects. We collaborate internationally with universities in EU, US, China, and Africa. Funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation my current aim is to collect scientific information on honey health impacts into a popular review article. I have my PhD in Medical Biochemistry and did my postdoc in Paris at INSERM 570. I am Adjunct Professor both in Pharmaceutical Biology at the University of Helsinki and in Public Health at the University of Eastern Finland.
I research and develop rural areas in various projects, especially related to rural businesses and different dimensions of well-being. In recent years, I have worked in projects related to community-based social entrepreneurship, Green Care, women's sustainable entrepreneurship and short food supply chains.
My doctoral dissertation takes place in the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Changes (PSRC) and it deals with the well-being of women in rural areas from the perspective of capabilities approach. I am a sign language interpreter (UAS) and a Master of Social and Health Administration.
I study prerequisites for digital and green transitions in sustainable regional development in the INNOCAP project. In the project, I investigate the factors enabling the twin transition by utilising geographic information systems (GIS).
I am a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme in Interdisciplinary Environmental Sciences (DENVI). In my doctoral dissertation, I examine the socio-economic impacts, regional differences and opportunities of the twin transition. My background is in geography and I wrote my Master's thesis on the impact of carbon farming on photosynthesis of arable crops in Finland based on satellite measurements.
I work with food sector and rural development. Through rural policy networking, I support the vitality of rural areas.
I have been promoting local food industry and SME food entrepreneurship for over 15 years together with a large food sector cooperation network. I work as a project manager for national food sector coordination, and in connection with this, I activate food sector operators to cooperate and exchange experiences, and build networks between operators. I edit the Aitoja makuja magazine and the aitojamakuja.fi website.
I am a geographer by education and in my doctoral dissertation I study the effects of development activities on changes in the operating environment of local food, the factors and phenomena that have influenced them.
I am a Doctoral Researcher and a member of the Human in Digital and Sustainable Economies research group at Ruralia, University of Helsinki. Currently, I am working on my dissertation topic, which explores the Japanese Furusato Nozei Hometown Tax Donation System from the perspective of platformization. In my dissertation, I examine how the logic of platform economy can be applied to the public sector, particularly in the context of regional development.
I use qualitative methods to investigate how private sector platform companies and municipalities interact within the Japanese system and to identify possibilities and challenges of public sector platformization. I hold a master’s degree in general linguistics, and my research is interdisciplinary. My research interests include the discursive approach to digital platforms, platformization, and platform ecosystems.
I work as a coordinator in the FOOD program (Towards a Sustainable, Healthy, and Climate-Neutral Food System). FOOD is a Strategic Research Council (SRC) Program that seeks solutions for moving towards a sustainable, healthy, and climate-neutral food system.
I am an agroecologist and a doctoral researcher at The Doctoral Programme in Sustainable Use of Renewable Natural Resources (AGFOREE). In my dissertation, I study the effects of recycled fertilizers and soil amendments on soil physical, chemical, and biological traits, crop nutrient uptake, and yield formation. The recycled nutrients in these products are derived from the systems of food production, processing, and consumption and different nutrient-rich biomasses and side streams from industries.
My background is in cultural studies. I am an ethnologist whose research is profiled especially by an ethnographic research approach. The subject of my work varies, but I am particularly inspired by looking at rural areas from other than human perspectives. I am interested in bringing to the scope of research issues that often remain invisible or that have not been considered worth exploring. My long-time fascination is the study of material culture.
I am a Doctor of Philosophy. My doctoral dissertation dealt with the temporalities and materialities of villages. At the Ruralia Institute, my job description also includes coordinating the Ruralia Institute's Visiting Scholar Programme.
I'm a university researcher on sustainable economy and cooperatives at Ruralia Institute at the University of Helsinki. I hold a PhD on Economics and Business Administration from Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics and a title of docent in Sustainable Economy from the University of Helsinki.
My research interests lie in community-based organizing and in the emergence dynamics of new (allegedly) pro-social and pro-environmental industries. My work have been published in distinguished journals in the fields of management, innovation, and sustainability. I also work as the academic head of Co-op Network Studies - a university network providing teaching on cooperatives – and lecture the course Cooperatives and Sustainable Development within it.
I work with food sector businesses and organizations in research and development roles, both in national and international projects. My areas of interest include business relationships of small businesses, short food supply chains, and the sustainability of the food system. Additionally, I am involved in assessing the regional economic impacts of food-related activities. I have coordinated Interreg BSR projects that have produced an extensive Sustainable Public Meal Toolkit.
I hold a Master's degree in Business and Economics with a major in marketing. In my doctoral research, I examine the asymmetrical business relationships of small food businesses as a marketing management challenge.
I work in development and research related to the food industry. Over the past twenty years, my areas of expertise have evolved into organic food production, local food-related value chains, food tourism and sustainable tourism. I also lead the Sustainable Food Systems expert group.
I am an economist specialized in responsible business. In my doctoral dissertation, I study the role of sustainability in tourism from a tourist's perspective.