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.

In my doctoral project, I investigate connections between belonging, development of group identities, urbanization, and political representation and participation in decision-making in the restrictive settings of contemporary Russia. More specifically, in my study, I analyze the peculiarities of these phenomena among non-Russian ethnic minorities and Indigenous peoples. My research is based on the case study of Komi people inhabiting Syktyvkar, the capital of Russia's north-western Komi Republic.

Nathaly Pinto is a doctoral researcher at Aalto University, Finland, and an Adjunct Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica in Ecuador. With design training in Ecuador and the Netherlands, she has spent nearly a decade collaborating on projects with popular classes and indigenous peoples, partnering with civil society organizations in Ecuador and Andean South America. Her research centers on participatory design from the Global South, popular communication, and design for social change. Currently, Nathaly's focus lies in closely working with indigenous organizations and youth in the Ecuadorian Amazon, conducting research and co-designing visual devices to support political-educational spaces for dialogue, deliberation, and learning.

Punam Noor’s research focuses on accommodating indigenous peoples' traditional knowledge in international climate change law with special reference to the European High Arctic, where she combines conceptual frameworks with indigenous traditional knowledge for the promotion of indigenous peoples' resilience against climate change. She is a PhD candidate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Lapland. She earlier had a Masters in Comparative and International Law from University of Eastern Finland. She specialised in Environmental and Climate Change Law and she did European Union Law as her minor studies. She has completed Postgraduate Diploma in Law from Northumbria University in the UK. Prior to that, she completed Bachelors in Law from University of London.

With my doctoral dissertation, I find out what kind of challenges the "green" energy transition means for the Sámi: How the industrial land use plans accelerated by the energy transition take into account the Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) of the Indigenous Peoples, and what the neglect of the FPIC reveals about assimilating social structures in Finland from the perspective of settler colonialism.

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.

Projects

Creative indigenous actors: Integration of Indigenous Studies at the University of Helsinki

New Native Leaderships and Forms of Power in Amazonia

Transforming the future in Brazil: ritual and indigenous agencies

United in Diversity: Monumental Landscapes, Regionality, and Cultural Dynamism in Pre-Columbian Western Amazonia

Passado e Presente de Povos Aruák na Amazônia Ocidental