Doctoral researcher at Tampere University on Decolonizing Understanding of Gender among Syrian Refugees in Lebanon, and Jordan.

I am a doctoral candidate in the Political, Societal and Regional Change programme experienced in qualitative research and implementation of development cooperation projects in Finland and Latin America. My doctoral research focuses on how the focus of women’s empowerment shifts when Finland’s development aid has been increasingly transferred from traditional development cooperation to the private sector through cross-sectoral partnerships with Kenya. My professional work has been focused on using research to inform project design and implementation in development cooperation initiatives for gender-based violence, gender equality, peacebuilding, psychosocial support, and migration. Previously I have conducted research on Women, Peace and Security, and feminism in Colombia, and refugees, agency, and gender-based violence in Norway.

Digital environment for disable's learning, futures

Dr. Tiina Seppälä is a university lecturer in Qualitative Research at the University of Lapland 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

I have had a background in International Relations with bachelor's and master's degrees as I wrote my MA thesis on the role of local non-state actors in the integration of refugees. Currently, I am a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Sociology at Middle East Technical University and a visiting doctoral researcher in the Discipline of Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. My major research area is the sociology of migration, and my minor is environmental sociology. At the nexus of these two main areas, I have specifically focused on the nexus of the climate crisis, neoliberal governance, and migratory movements along with the urban-rural dynamics, socio-ecological and political-economic transformations in the web of life. In addition to that, I have an interest in decolonial philosophy, which lead me to investigate each phase of climate crisis and migration processes through the relations of power, capital, nature, and coloniality.