I am a doctoral researcher in peace and conflict studies at Tampere Peace Research Institute, Tampere University. My doctoral research focuses on transnational women’s rights activism, solidarity, and working across differences in the case of Iran. My professional work has been focused on women’s rights activism in Iran and in the diaspora from the feminist peace studies and intersectionality perspective. Previously I have conducted research on the characteristics of the Iranian women’s movement and the peaceful transformation of Iranian society. Besides, I am a journalist, and I have been working as a journalist for more than 10 years. I am a co-founder of the first news agency for Persian-speaking immigrants in Finland.

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.

Indigenous governance, extractivism, Ecuador

Dr. Tiina Seppälä is a senior researcher in International Relations 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