At the Aleksanteri Institute, this gap was already recognised in the early 2000s, but things can take time in the academic world, as expertise cannot be created overnight. In 2018 we are happy to present three new associate professors in three fields that have become even more topical in recent years.
Russian Big Data
Assistant Professor Daria Gritsenko
Daria Gritsenko participated in the doctoral school for Russian and Eastern European Studies at the Aleksanteri Institute and defended her thesis On Governance of Quality Shipping in the Baltic Sea at the University of Helsinki faculty of Social Sciences in 2014. During her post-doctoral period, she has focused not only in maritime policies but environmental sustainability and large infrastructure governance in the Russian Arctic. Daria has a lot of interdisciplinary teaching experience and in her new position she is briskly building up Digital Russia Studies, a network of scholars and students who share the interest in combining data science and social sciences.
Russian Law and Administration
Associate Professor Marianna Muravyeva
Marianna Muravyeva has been engaged in socio-legal research, plus policy activities with public and voluntary sector organisations since 1996. Muravyeva received the highest distinction for her PhD thesis on family history in 2000. Her interdisciplinary research brings together history, social sciences, and law, and she’s especially known for her studies in gender history and the history of crime. Her work as associate professor at the Aleksanteri Institute begins in May 2018, greatly strengthening the cluster of law and administration studies at the Institute with a specific focus on gender and law and human rights of women and LGBTQI+ people.
Read more about Marianna here.
Russian Security Policy
Assistant Professor Katri Pynnöniemi
Katri Pynnöniemi was appointed as the first holder of Mannerheim Professorship on the Russian Security Policy in August 2017, which is a joint professorship between University of Helsinki and the National Defence University. At the National Defence University she works as a member of the Russian Art of War team at the Department of Warfare. This unique combination allows her to build inter-disciplinary research projects that study the evolution of Russian security thinking and threat perceptions and Russia’s future role in global power constellation. Previously Pynnöniemi has worked as a senior researcher at the Finnish Institute in Foreign Affairs, and as a visiting researcher at the research institutes in Moscow (2007), Tartu (2012), Stockholm (2016) and Washington D.C. (2017).
Russian and Eastern European studies, especially in areas of security, law, and technology is often seen as a very masculine field but the new generation of scholars is proving this to be a misconception. The new associate professors are widely-published and renowned across the global academic community and bring a welcome diversity and new energy to Finnish scholarly discourse.
The Aleksanteri Institute welcomes the new professors and wishes everyone a happy International Women’s Day!