Karembe F. Ahimbisibwe is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. He is also a Lecturer in the Department of Adult and Community Education at Makerere University, Uganda where has over 20 years of experience of teaching and supervising graduate and undergraduate students. His research focuses on citizenship, everyday resistance, participatory learning, grassroots associations and development, pandemic precarity, and NGOs. His work has been published in Routledge, Palgrave Macmillan, Global Society, and International Development Planning Review, among others.

Salla Atkins is a social scientist and professor of Public Health (especially Global Health) at the Faculty of Social Sciences. She is also a research specialist at the department of Global Public Health Sciences at Karolinska Institutet. For the past 16 years Salla has researched issues related to the social determinants of health, poverty, inequity, health systems and policy in low, middle, and high-income countries. Her interest is in mixed-methods and register research, especially multisectoral interventions to improve health and life course effects of social inequalities. Salla has coordinated large EU projects during her postdoctoral work and currently has projects in Finland in addition to collaborations with partners in Mozambique, Tanzania, Kenya, India, and South Africa on various projects related to health equity. Her work is situated in the space between international, national and regional policy, and individual lives.

I am a doctoral research in Social Sciences, Youth Studies. My thesis research explores skateboarding culture in Morocco and the lived experiences of Moroccan skateboarders through an ethnographic approach.

I have a bachelor’s degree in English translation and a master’s degree in communication science and journalism and Business Administration both from the University in Iran. After studying in academia, I decided to move to international business projects and consulting. For nearly 10 years, I worked for a Simense project as a commercial expert and for 2 years as a business counsultant in Finland. Then, I returned to academia to pursue a research career. Currently, I am a doctoral researcher in social anthropology at Tampere University. My working and research interest relates to crisis management, social anthropology, ethnography, social media, media management, and online ethnography.

I hold a Master's in Social Science Research, specializing in Public Policy Analysis from Tampere University. My Master's thesis focused on how insights from behavioral economics, namely prospect theory, can guide preventive policy formation in public health, by laying a framework for how policy officials can reduce perceived barriers to the consumption of preventive care, policy thereby reaching vulnerable and high risk groups. Beginning January 2024, I am a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral programme on Inequalities, Interventions and New Welfare State (DPInvest) at the University of Turku. My dissertation will create the first reference budgets for university/university of applied sciences students in Finland, laying out the resources that Finnish and non-EU students in Finland need to participate in current Finnish society.

Mika Kautonen, D.Sc., Adjunct Professor, is the Head of the Innovation Studies Group in TaSTI, Research Centre for Knowledge, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University, Finland. His and his research group's research interests relates especially to the expansion of innovation activities in present-day societies, to new stakeholder groups, sectors and countries. Therefore he is also interested in innovation activities and innovation policies in developing countries. Those innovation activities are of special interest that contributes to a more sustainable society.

Projects

Co-creation of a Namibian Smart Community (SmartCom)

I'm a student in the doctoral programme of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. My research is at the intersection of agroecology, political ecology and youth employment and livelihoods. In particular, I focus on young farmers in Benin and their health-related motivations and strategies in using ecological farming methods.

PhD in Social Science, University of Lapland (Finland). MA in International Relations, Webster University, Vienna (Austria). Specialist in International Relations, Kazan State University (Russia). BA in Jurisprudence, Kazan National Research Technical University (Russia).

Saeed is working on a PhD thesis tentatively entitled “The governance of urban culture in the era of globalisation: an analysis of international policy discourses & Cosmopolitan case- examples”. He investigates this topic from the perspectives of cosmopolitanism and governmentality.

Brendah Nakyazze is a doctoral candidate at Åbo Akademi University Finland pursuing a doctoral degree in Social Sciences (Developmental Psychology). Her research aims to investigate intimate partner sexual aggression and its psychological concomitants in Uganda. The study encompasses measurements of victimisation from sexual aggression in intimate relationships, including marital rape, as well as connected factors such as victimisation due to denial of sex, and accepting attitudes towards marital rape. The connection between victimisation from intimate partner sexual aggression and other types of victimisation will also be studied. Her research also puts forward the psychological concomitants of intimate partner sexual abuse which are important to highlight in Africa where mental health is often misunderstood and not prioritized. Her published work includes; 1. Sexual abuse and accepting attitudes towards intimate partner rape in Uganda. 2. Victimisation from intimate partner rape in Uganda: Sex differences, psychological concomitants, and the effect of educational level. 3. Intimate partner violence during the COVID-19 pandemic: An impending pubic Health crisis in Africa.