Katariina Salmela-Aro is a Academy professor, a doctor of psychology and a professor of educational sciences in University of Helsinki. She is Past President of the European Association for Developmental Psychology, and previous Secretary General of International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD) and expert in OECD Education2030. Salmela-Aro studies the impact of climate change and the coronavirus on young people’s wellbeing both in Finland and internationally. Her key research themes are school engagement, burnout, optimal learning moments, experience sampling method, life-span model of motivation and related interventions.
Link to Katariina Salmela-Aro's profile.
Link to University of Helsinki page about Academy Professors.
Dr. Katja Upadyaya is an Associate Professor (Docent) and Lecturer at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki, Finland. Her academic expertise encompasses a diverse range of topics within the field of educational psychology. Driven by a passion for understanding and enhancing well-being, she has dedicated her research endeavors to exploring occupational and academic well-being, motivation, and research methodology. In addition to her contributions to the field of educational sciences, Dr. Upadyaya has delved into the dynamics of teacher-student and parent-child interactions. Her research extends to the well-being of teachers and school principals, shedding light on crucial aspects of the educational environment. Dr. Upadyaya's comprehensive approach to research also includes ongoing investigations into children's well-being, socio-emotional skills, and parental burnout. With a commitment to lifelong learning, Dr. Katja Upadyaya continues to make significant strides in advancing our understanding of key factors that influence well-being and motivation in educational settings. Her multidimensional research portfolio underscores a dedication to creating positive impacts on various aspects of education and human development.
Lauri Hietajärvi is a postdoctoral researcher in educational psychology at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, specialising in advanced statistical methods. He has been working with various cross-sectional and longitudinal datasets utilizing several statistical methods, including between and within-person variable- and person-oriented approaches. Lauri is primarily interested in studying adolescents’ academic wellbeing and digital media. He is also interested in general issues of study and work-related motivation and wellbeing.
Rasmus Mannerström is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. His main research focus is currently on the longitudinal interrelationships between personal/social identity issues, wellbeing, gender and socioeconomic status in adolescence and young adulthood. Rasmus has also studied political values, ideology and engagement among young adults. Furthermore he has a keen interest in qualitative research on identity issues, questions ranging from nationalism and xenophobia to career choice-discourses and representations of femininity and masculinity on social media.
Florencia Sortheix is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Education at UH. She has extensive knowledge of the relationship between personal values and well-being, as well as cross-cultural and environmental psychology. Her studies have mainly focused on the connection between values and well-being from a cross-cultural perspective. In addition, she has explored the development of work values and their associations with various career outcomes such as work engagement, entrepreneurship, and leadership. Recently, she has also begun researching family outcomes.
Dr Junlin Yu is an Academy Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki. His research centres on motivation in educational settings, with a particular focus on growth mindset, achievement goals, and the impact of gender. Currently, he leads a Finnish Research Council-funded project on creating classroom contexts that foster students' growth mindset (2023-27). Before joining the University of Helsinki, he received his PhD and MPhil from the University of Cambridge.
Toyama Hiroyuki is a postdoctoral researcher. The field of his expertise is work and organizational psychology and occupational health psychology. His current research focuses on workers’ self-regulatory ability. Especially, he is curious about understanding how workers’ job crafting affects well-being outcomes.
Marguerite Beattie is a postdoctoral researcher with diverse interests and experience in health, political, and environmental psychology. Her past research has mainly been on adolescents' motivation, behavior change, and well-being. Currently, she is researching adolescent belongingness and loneliness, especially with regard to groups.
Elisa Vilhunen works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. She is also a visiting researcher at the Department of Media in the Aalto University, Espoo. Her main research interests lie in the intersection of science education and educational psychology. Currently, her research focuses on student engagement and emotions in climate education. Elisa has a background in secondary education as a science teacher and as a school counselor.
Olli-Pekka Heinimäki serves as a postdoctoral researcher at both the University of Helsinki, within the Faculty of Educational Sciences, and the University of Turku, in the Department of Teacher Education. His research has focused on student interaction and collaboration, along with the most effective strategies teachers can use to support these processes. Currently, he studies topics related to teachers well-being.
Erika Maksniemi is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. With a focus on wellbeing in the digital age, her research investigates various socio-digital practices, sleep behavior, and wellbeing, examining their interconnectedness on both daily and long-term scales. Dr. Maksniemi employs sophisticated multilevel datasets to deepen understanding in this multidiciplinary research area.
Pei-Hsin is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. Her research interests are the emotions and well-being of teachers and students in the classroom. Her current focus is specifically on the situational emotional experiences of teachers while teaching and the interplay between teachers and students to support a positive climate in school settings.
Mailis is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. Her research interests focus on educational leaders and leadership, occupational well-being, and shared leadership practices in an educational context. She is particularly interested in educational leadership and its impact on school development and employee well-being in school communities. Additionally, she has a keen interest in qualitative and mixed methods research approaches.
Janica Vinni-Laakso is a PhD cadidate drived by the question why some students thrive at school and others do not, and what can we do to enhance student motivation and wellbeing in schools across educational levels. She is interested in developmental perspectives and uses various longitudinal data sets to examine students' motivation, and future educational and occupational aspirations. She is also keen on learning statistical methods, and utilize between and within -level person and variable -oriented approaches.
Fatemeh is a doctoral researcher both in the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki and the Department of Psychology at the University of Jyväskylä. Her research mainly focuses on social influence among adults and adolescents. Currently, she is investigating the digital media usage of adolescents and its impact on their psychological and academic well-being.
Jussi Järvinen is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Education. His research interests include students' motivation, well-being and situational learning-related experiences. His PHD research focuses on situational engagement, motivation and emotions.
Salla is a doctoral researcher keen on exploring social aspects of climate change. Her main interest lies in climate change's influences on people's well-being and mental health. She is driven by the questions: 1) What kind of coping mechanisms individuals use to cope with distress and anxiety caused by climate change; 2) What is the relation between climate change related well-being and pro-environmental behavior; and 3) how can we support individuals' well-being and encourage them to act against climate change at the same time. Salla is mainly working in interdisciplinary research projects where focus is on quantitative and longitudinal data.
Anne is a school psychologist and a PhD candidate, who is interested in adolescent academic well-being. Her research focuses on personal resources like beneficial stress mindset and academic buoyancy and their relations to school engagement and burnout. She studies light touch interventions that could be utilized in preventive student welfare services.
Inka Ronkainen is a doctoral researcher in the Faculty of Educational Sciences, examining various dimensions of student motivation. Her PhD dissertation focuses on the adolescent's motivation in the context of inquiry-based climate education. To study this, she uses quantitative student questionnaire data and experience sampling method (ESM) data with person-oriented and situational approaches.
Yirou Fang is a doctoral researcher in developmental psychology and gender study at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki. Her interests include learning, human development, and gender study. She is curious about how people of different gender experience wellbeing-related setbacks at work place differently. She has received a fellowship from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Innovative Training Network program and is currently working on her new project about gender, career, and wellbeing.
Kezia Olive is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Educational Sciences, University of Helsinki. She received a fellowship from Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Innovative Training Networks program to study gendered pathways to STEM aspiration in adolescent students. That being said, she is especially interested in development of subjective task values, its manifestation in school engagement, the effect of gender and how it affects long-term aspiration. She is going to use the longitudinal dataset of elementary school and adolescent students and experience sampling data.
Lotta Allemand is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Educational Sciences at the University of Helsinki. She is interested in students’, teachers’, and parents’ well-being and teacher-student and teacher-parent interaction. She is also interested in conducting research on preventive and promotive interventions that aim to enhance students’ well-being. Her PhD research focuses on Let’s Talk about Children intervention in a school context.
Ida Huttunen is a doctoral researcher at the faculty of Education, University of Helsinki. She is interested in adolescents' socio-emotional skills. Her PhD studies how socio-emotional skills develop during adolescence and how socio-emotional skills are related to students' school well-being and achievement.
Johannes Gale is a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, focusing in the impact of teacher beliefs and practices on the development of student growth mindsets. Holding a master’s in education from the same university, he is dedicated to advancing the field of education and fostering environments where both teachers and students can thrive and grow.
With over two years of experience as a research assistant and project coordinator across multiple projects, Johannes has honed his organizational skills and become an expert in data collection, preparing him for the academic journey ahead.
Miikka Turkkila is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Educational Sciences. His PhD research explores and develops network analysis methods to study learning in digitally intensive science classrooms. Alongside network analysis, his work involves testing students' conceptual and procedural knowledge. He is also known for developing TrackIt, a minimal web app for classroom observations.
Haoyan Huang is a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. His research focuses on adolescents' learning environment, curiosity, persistence, creativity, and well-being. He is interested in how family and school can help adolescents facilitate curiosity and persistence in learning, inspire creative thinking, and improve well-being. He uses open datasets from International surveys (e.g., PISA and SSES) as well as longitudinal datasets of Chinese and Finnish adolescents.
Pihka is a research assistant in the Minds Hub research group. She focuses on the data management for all projects by the group. She’s also currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Psychology.
Oona Kettunen works as a research assistant in the Minds Hub research group. She is involved in various research projects within the team. Alongside her job, she is completing her Master’s degree in Educational Sciences in University of Helsinki.