My doctoral research aims to determine the link between Forest Landscape Restoration and Local Livelihoods in the context of the vigorous expansion of planted forests in Vietnam that is dominated by high-density monocultures of non-native species.

(1) South Korea’s official development assistance in East Africa South Korea’s role in its recent development partnership with a focus on the Global Saema?l Undong (New Village Movement, SMU) programme. South Korea's official donor rhetoric points towards more symmetric aid relationships: emphasis on national ownership, request-based approach, notions of self-reliance and non-hierarchical relationships. Tanzania’s experience with the SMU programme has been selected for an in-depth case study. (2) International aid and institutional development in North Korea The interaction between international aid actors, the DPRK government and beneficiaries has resulted in the emergence of – what institutional theorists call – a ‘new field’. Using qualitative research methods, this research project identifies, categorizes and discusses a set of endogenously grown institutions in the DPRK that have emerged as part of the ‘new field’.

Yuzhuo Cai is a Senior Lecturer and Adjunct Professor at the Higher Education Group (HEG), Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University, Finland. He has been with the HEG for 15 years and was the Acting Professor of the unit from August 2013 to July 2014. He is the (Chinese) Director of Sino-Finnish Education Research Centre jointly coordinated by Tampere University and Beijing Normal University. His teaching and research areas are higher education policy and management, internationalisation of higher education, innovation studies and comparative education, with 78 peer reviewed publications (59 in English) and 6 scholarly books in these fields.

Doctoral researcher in sustainability transformations with a focus on indigenous knowledges, agroecology practices, native seeds protection and intellectual property law for protection of ancestral knowledges. Economics and political science background.

Researcher, educator and musician working at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki, Center for Educational Research and Academic Development (CERADA). My current project on children's singing in culturally diverse Finnish schools is part of the ArtsEqual Research initiative (The Arts as a Public Service: Strategic Steps towards Equality) funded by the Academy of Finland.

Projects

Translocation and Safe Design of Surface Engineered Metal oxide Nanoparticles (BRASINOEU)

I research bushmeat hunting, wildlife trade and alternative livelihoods. In my PhD, I will also work with Sustainable Development Goals and Indigenous People and Local Communities.

Projects

Forest Landscape Rehabilitation in the Mekong River Basin (FORMEB)

Forestry Higher Education Cooperation between Laos and Finland (FoLAFI)

Projects

Family Changes after Suicide in China

My research topic is Cross-Border AI Licensing and Royalty Classification: Rethinking International Tax Rules for API Access, Model Licensing, and AI-Driven Services. AI companies increasingly monetize their technology through API access, model licensing, subscription-based services, and usage-based pricing. These models generate cross-border payments that do not fit neatly within treaty categories such as royalties, technical services, or business profits. Existing treaty wordings were drafted for static, human-led software and location-based value creation, not for automated inference, cloud-based model delivery, or AI-generated outputs. As a result, tax authorities struggle to determine whether payments for AI model access constitute use of copyright, use of equipment, automated digital services, or a hybrid category not contemplated by current treaties. Divergent OECD and UN approaches and AI's reliance on distributed server infrastructure further increase interpretive uncertainty and the risks of double taxation/non-taxation, and tax planning based on contractual structuring or server location. Against this backdrop, the dissertation develops a doctrinal framework for classifying cross-border AI-related payments. Paper 1 analyses the legal nature of Income arising from AI models by proposing a taxonomy of AI-related rights—model weights, training data rights, inference rights, and deployment rights—and assessing whether API access is “use of copyright,” whether inference is “use of equipment,” whether fine-tuning transfers IP, and whether AI outputs qualify as automated services. Paper 2 evaluates the limits of the OECD and UN Model Conventions for income arising from AI models by analysing the relevant treaty articles and their applicability to modern AI transactions. Paper 3 proposes new treaty provisions for AI-based transactions, examining whether a dedicated article is needed, how taxing rights should be allocated, and how to prevent double (non) taxation. The Introduction will present the context, article summaries, and methods. Together, the papers provide a unified framework for future treaty reform.