I am starting the Doctorate Program at Aalto University in 2021. My research project aims at investigating how frugal social innovations from the Global South might create alternative concepts and appropriated meanings of quality, well-being, social change, consequently, development. This proposal is aligned with contemporary efforts to link management research to Grand Challenges such as poverty alleviation (Kistruck & Shulist, 2020), positioned at the emergent and interdisciplinary field of Business and Development (Lund-Thomsen et al., 2020). I believe that being part of the UniPID DocNet will be an excellent opportunity to expand my training opportunities, exchange and partnerships, while also collaborating with the network, bringing a different background and commitment to discuss the grand societal challenges and development issues in the world. To embark on such an endeavor, I bring an interdisciplinary and multifaceted background, as a researcher and educator from Latin America, working with topics related to social innovation, entrepreneurship, and sustainable development, including significant experience in international collaborations in Brazil, the USA, Uganda, India, and other countries in Latin America and Europe.

I am interested in the law on statehood, statelessness, climate-induced migration and small island states.

Dissertation topic: The association of school meals with school attendance and local agriculture in Malawi.

Jarkko Saarinen is a Professor of Geography at the University of Oulu, Finland, and a Distinguished Visiting Professor (Sustainability Management) at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. His research interests include tourism and development, sustainability in tourism, climate change adaptation, tourism-community relations and nature conservation studies. He is Editor for the Tourism Geographies and Associate Editor for the Annals of Tourism Research. His recent publications include edited/co-edited books: Resilient Destinations (Routledge, 2019) and Tourism, Change and the Global South (Routledge, 2021).

Saila-Maria Saaristo is a doctoral researcher and lecturer in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki, and a member of Urbaria (Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies). Her current research project focuses on studying inequalities and discriminations, which are approached through the case of inequalities in access to housing, with a particular focus on homelessness and forced evictions. The study investigates especially gendered, classed and racialised housing exclusions. In addition to the academic career, Saaristo has worked extensively as a consultor, manager and coordinator of different kinds of international cooperation projects financed by the European Union and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland, in the areas of urban development and housing, civil society, good governance and democracy, human rights, and gender. She has worked and lived in many countries, including Cape Verde, Tanzania, Mozambique, Brazil, Bolivia and Portugal.

Projects

Transformative Actions? Occupations and Evictions in Lisbon Metropolitan Area, Portugal

I am a PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Science, Forestry and Technology, UEF. I am have a Masters in economics and a BSc in Computer Science. My research interests: Serious Games in the educational context, economics of innovation and public (health) policy. I have substantial experience in the private sector (systems analyst, financial economics, data analysis and policy analysis).

Researcher interested in educational technologies and AI Economist interested in sustainable development in the Global South

I am a PhD researcher in Energy Literature with a doctorate project in Petrofiction and the impact of oil extraction on both people and the environment, especially the ethnic minorities and indigenous people in the Global North and Global South.

Siiri Sandberg is a Ph.D. student in the Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences (SOC) at the University of Helsinki. Siiri holds master’s degrees in Social and Cultural Anthropology and Urban Studies and Planning. The Ph.D. research draws on political ecology to study youth participation in forest conservation in Taita Hills, Kenya. 

Dr. Tiina Seppälä is a university lecturer in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki and adjunct professor of International Development Studies at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. She has engaged with women’s rights and slum activists in Nepal and Bangladesh, anti-eviction movements in India, asylum seekers in Finland and anti-war activists in the UK. She is interested in development, displacement, social movements, post/decolonial and feminist theory, ethnographic research and arts-based methods.

Projects

Governance, Resistance and Neoliberal Development: Struggles against Development-Induced Displacement and Forced Evictions in South Asia