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.

My research interests include internal and cross-border displacement in Sub-Saharan Africa, politics of belonging, identity building and state formation. In my ethnographic Doctoral Study I use the return migration of Zimbabweans from neighbouring Southern African countries as an avenue for exploring the dynamics of returnee urban emplacement.

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.

ethnographer and film documentarist with eyes on feminisms & global politics of post-conflict/disaster reconstruction: stydying intersection of gender and other forms of inequalities in disaster politics, political violence, and national ideologies,

Projects

The politics of impact assessment in framing community 'development' in extractive projects

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

My research focuses on West African traditions of music and dance, especially the Wolof sabar tradition in Senegal. During 2019 - 2022, I am conducting my postdoctoral research project "Moving knowledge: the changing embodiments of cultural knowledge in Senegalese sabar performances", funded by Academy of Finland.

Prof, Ph.D., Laura Stark’s research focuses on gender, sexuality, mobile telephony, urban poverty and early marriage in Tanzania. She is co-editor of the journal Ethnologia Europaea. She has edited the Bloomsbury volume Power and Informality in Urban Africa with Annika Björnsdotter Teppo (2022); and the Routledge volume Gendered Power and Mobile Technology: Intersections in the Global South (2019) with Caroline Wamala Larsson. She has led four major funded research projects, including Mobile Technology, Gender and Development in Africa and India (2010–2013); and Urban Renewal and Income-Generating Spaces for Youth and Women in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (2013–2017). Email: laura.stark@jyu.fi; Home pages: www.jyu.fi/hytk/fi/laitokset/hela/en/hela-staff/stark-laura www.laurastark.fi

Projects

Urban Poverty, Urban Renewal and Income-Generating Spaces in Ethiopia and Tanzania

My PhD research intertwines Feminist Peace Research, Sociological neoinstitutionalism and sociology of measurement. I study the measurement practices embedded in National Action Plans (NAPs) for the UN Resolution 1325 on Women Peace and Security (WPS), and particularly, the construction and use of indicators. Indicators have become an increasingly important mechanism of governance, as well as knowledge production, and in my study are understood as social practices allowing me to focus not only on what is being measured but also on its effects on the policy field. The project compiled a global dataset of 7500 indicators harvested from all the NAPs adopted between 2005 and 2020, enabling both spatial and linear windows of inquiry. In addition, an ethnography of WPS indicators in Nigeria (conducted during 2020) provides new knowledge about the role of local actors in translating indicators into practice.

Projects

Sickness, health and therapeutic trajectories in the Kilimanjaro region, Tanzania: A community perspective on global health