I have been recently working on a critique of mainstream ( neoclassical and neoliberal) Economics and its relation to producing Climate Change and Ecological crises. I am a member of EXALT ( Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative--- www.exalt.fi) I have been working on the conceptualisation of "global extractivism" ( see our forthcoming Special Forum on Extractivsm in the Journal of Peasant Studies). With Hamed Hosseini I have ben developing the concept of "Transversal cosmopolitanism" as a dialogic form of co-construction of knowledge for transformative praxes.

After my retirement I'm on professorial contract continuing to conduct research and supervise PhD students in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. My own research areas include histories of global development, Finnish development cooperation and Tanzanian long-term development history. I supervise students whose topics are in some way related to any of these.

University Researcher in Youth Work and Youth Research at Tampere University, and in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. For more information: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/onodera/

Academy Fellow and Principal Investigator of Global Development Studies, focusing on development, politics, and state formation in Latin America and Africa.

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

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

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.

I am a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme in School, Education, Society and Culture in University of Helsinki. My PhD research is about understanding and applying global citizenship education in upper secondary vocational education in Finland. My particular interests include youth civic engagement and controversial issues in education, as well as examining the tensions between the promotion of pluralistic perspectives and the creation of safer spaces for learning. My research interests reflect my earlier studies in humanistic and social sciences (African Studies and Global Development Studies) as well as work experience within development cooperation, global education, and internationalisation in education.