The AGORA community supports junior and senior researchers, research fellows and affiliates interested in questions of social justice and equality. Researchers and key partners involved in the AGORA’s activities are introduced below.
Researchers
Professor (tenured) of social justice and equality in education
Research areas:
- Marketisation, privatisation, neoliberalism, knowledge and affective capitalism, (new) governance
- Social exclusion, societal differences, and inequalities, societal power relations
- Agency perspectives in higher education, research, vocational education, teacher training, youth work, adult education and public sector development activities
- Heteronormativity and the rise of psy-disciplines
- Future trajectories of education in terms of precision education governance
Ongoing projects: FuturEd, CoSupport
Website kristiinabrunila.com
Twitter @KristiintaBrunil
Contact: kristiina.brunila@helsinki.fi
Postdoctoral researcher
Research areas:
- New practices of mental health work and ableism
- Gender equality politics and equality work
- Poststructural methodologies and nomadic research
- Theories of power and subjectification
Ongoing project: CoSupport
Contact: elina.ikavalko@helsinki.fi
Postdoctoral researcher
Research areas:
- Whiteness, racism and (neo-)colonialism in global and local mental health policies and practices
- Mental health services provided for racialized young people
- Integration policies and practices in education in terms of gender, racism and marginalization
Ongoing project: CoSupport
Contact: tuuli.kurki@helsinki.fi
Postdoctoral researcher
Research areas:
- Philosophy of education
- Hans-Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics
- Political exclusion and political extremism as challenges for democracy and citizenship education
- Normative conditions of democratic participation inherent in the contemporary theories of democracy
- Theory and practice of citizenship education
Ongoing projects: CoSupport, FuturEd, Democracy for Inclusion
Contact: anniina.leiviska@helsinki.fi
University lecturer
Research areas:
- Theories of intersectionality and anti-racism.
- Norm criticism in children’s culture and critical literacies in early childhood education
- Privatization of early childhood education and care (ECEC) services
- Marketization of ECEC pedagogy
- Precision education and ECEC teacher’s profession
- Assemblages of edu-business
Ongoing projects: CoSupport, FuturEd
Contact: jaana.pesonen@helsinki.fi
University lecturer
Research areas:
- Privatization of early childhood education and care (ECEC) serrvices
- Marketization of ECEC pedagogy
- Precision education and ECEC teacher’s profession
- Assemblages of edu-business
Ongoing projects: CoSupport, FuturEd
Contact: satu.m.valkonen@helsinki.fi
Postdoctoral researcher
Research areas:
- Social constructions of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
- Identity and subjectivity constructions, otherness and othering, social Inclusion and exclusion, ableism in education discourse practices
- Theorizing inclusive education, (mis)conceptualizations of inclusive education
- Implementation of behavioral support at schools
- Disability studies in education, Inclusive education, Special education, Discourse studies
Ongoing projects: CoSupport
Contact: juho.honkasilta@helsinki.fi
Postdoctoral researcher
Research areas:
- Future projections in Nordic comprehensive education
- Social Systems Theory
- Comparative approaches on education policy
- Deregulation, privatization and marketization of education
Ongoing projects: PROFE, FuturEd
Contact: petteri.hansen@helsinki.fi
University lecturer
Research areas:
- History of Education
- Construction of Finnish teacher education in post-war Finland
- Academisation of teacher education
- Digitalisation and future visions in education
- Rhetoric analysis
Ongoing projects: FuturEd
Contact: janne.santti@helsinki.fi
Postdoctoral researcher
Research areas:
- Education politics
- Comparative and international education
- Large-scale assessments and education indicators as political instruments
- The interface of public and private actors in education governance
- Commodification and marketization of education
- Quality assurance and evaluation policies in education
- Finnish education export
- Education policies and practices in the Global South
Ongoing projects: Demystifying education export: analyzing the effects of Finnish education export from the perspective of the importer; FuturEd
Contact: helena.candido@helsinki.fi
Professor
Research areas:
- Positioning of neuroscience and learning psychology in the field of educational sciences
- Effects of arts and skills education on agency and cognition
Ongoing projects: FuturEd
Contact: minna.huotilainen@helsinki.fi
University lecturer
Research area:
- philosophical and ethical questions in education on both societal and classroom level.
Current projects are:
- A critique of "competence". Globalization and its influence on basic notions in education.
- The body and the digital. The need of bodily and physical experience of oneself, the other(s) and the world for learning, teaching and understanding
- Communities of inquiry: Critical engagement in knowledge as a shared task with others, both classroom-methods of philosophy for children and democratic strategies for empowerment, enlightenment and resistance.
Doctoral student
Research areas
Inclusion, racialization, education and integration
Topic of PhD
How refugees and immigrants are constructed as integrateable and skilled through integration policies and training practices. The focus is on labour-market oriented integration training
Ongoing projects: CoSupport
Contact: ameera.masoud@helsinki.fi
Doctoral student
Research areas:
- Governance, social exclusion, policies and practices in youth transitions
Topic of PhD:
- Young adults considered to be ‘at risk’ of social exclusion, with a special focus on policies and practices that are targeted to enhance young people’s integration ‘back’ to society.
Ongoing projects: CoSupport
Contact: katariina.mertanen@helsinki.fi
Doctoral student
Research areas:
- Governmentality, neoliberalism, youth support systems, psychologisation, entrepreneuralisation, citizenship, subjectification
- Geneaology, History of the present
- Philosophy and critical social anthropology Postcolonial and feminist theory
Topic of PhD:
- Governing young people through neoliberal management – A Genealogy of vulnerability of young people in Finland.
Ongoing projects: CoSupport
Contact: kalle.makela@helsinki.fi
Doctoral student
Research areas:
- Knowledge capitalism
- Affective work
- Critical pedagogy
Topic of PhD:
- The effects of technology on school space and power relations. Looking at upper secondary school student’s communication and technology use during school days.
Contact: antti.paakkari@helsinki.fi
Doctoral student
Research areas:
- Philosophy of critical pedagogy, Critical feminist theory
- Critical Social Theory
- Democratic education, and political sociology of education
Topic of PhD:
- Developing theory of democratic education from the standpoint of philosophies of critical pedagogies, and providing new theoretical perspectives in conversation with recent critical feminist and political theories.
- The philosophy of critical pedagogy in my project refers to theoretical framework that draws its philosophical foundations from Critical Social Theory and is originated by Paulo Freire’s political pedagogy.
Ongoing projects: CoSupport
Contact: katariina.tiainen@helsinki.fi
Doctoral student
Research areas:
- Immigration, gender and feminist studies
- Motherhood ideology
Topic of PhD:
- Immigrant mothers’ educational experiences and sense of belonging in Icelandic higher education, in conjunction with their identity construction and strategies for balancing multiple responsibilities to achieve academic success. Research also investigates the impact of intersectional approach or lack thereof in educational policies and practices on educational experiences of students of minority background
Doctoral student
Research areas:
- Precision education governance
- Life-Skills Management policies
- Youth transitions
- Genealogical-discursive approaches
Topic of PhD:
- Rethinking Life Skills-Based Education as a Form of Precision Education Governance
Ongoing projects: FuturEd
Contact: saara.vainio@helsinki.fi
Doctoral student
- Philosophy of education, political theory of anarchism, anarchist education and critical pedagogy
- Utilizing the theory of anarchism to develop novel theoretical grounds and conceptual tools for understanding and analyzing current educational trajectories, as well as counter-practices for educational justice and equality
Ongoing projects: FuturEd
Contact: ivan.zamotkin@helsinki.fi
Doctoral student
Research areas and interests:
- inequality, power-relations, critical theories in education
- human rights education
- moral philosophy
- philosophy of education
Topic of PhD:
Re-evaluating the moral, educational and legal aspects in human rights education