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.

Eurídice, a versatile social scientist with an interdisciplinary foundation, is dedicated to unraveling the intricate links between public spaces, migration dynamics, and identity development. Drawing on her multifaceted background built between Brazil and Finland, Eurídice engages in cutting-edge explorations of urban design to foster social mixing and combat prejudice, leveraging her early proficiency in public management and legal studies. Her research agenda focuses on cultural public spaces and the dynamics of identity development in mixed-background individuals, a topic directly connected to her activist work at Ninho ry. Additionally, Eurídice has contributed to research projects centered around public spaces and deradicalization, smart mobility to counteract inequalities, and establishing daycare centers catering to children of informal female workers.

Omotomilola Ikotun is a researcher of the Time, Space and the Environment in Society Doctoral Programme at the University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu. Her research analyses pastoral access to water supply, pastoral inequality and the impact of environmental conflicts on borders, access to natural resources, and agriculture market access development in Nigeria and West Africa.

Projects

The Politics of Corporate Resource Exploitation: Social Movement Influence on Paper- and Metal Industry Investments in Brazil and India

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.

Lassi Roininen is an associate professor (tenure track) in applied mathematics in the School of Engineering Science in Lappeenranta University of Technology. He is also an adjunct professor in applied mathematics in University of Oulu, Finland. He works on a broad spectrum from the fundamental mathematical inverse problems theory to applications in near-space remote sensing and subsurface imaging. He collaborates with high-level international research groups both in academia and industry. His research highlight is the development of the methodology of discretisation-invariant and computationally feasible priors for Bayesian inversion of function-valued unknowns. Applications include e.g. tomography (ionospheric, electrical impedance, X-ray) and radar pulse-compression coding and analysis methods.

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

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.