Tiina Seppälä

Summary

Dr. Tiina Seppälä is a university lecturer in Qualitative Research 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.

Profile

Tiina Seppälä holds a PhD in International Relations. Her PhD thesis (2010) dealt with the anti-war movement and theories of global resistance. She is interested in activism, social movements, development, forced migration, displacement, post/decolonial studies, feminist theory, ethnography and engaged scholarship. Recently, she has focused on feminization of resistance, decolonial feminist solidarity, and arts-based research methods. She has engaged with slum activists and women’s rights movements in Nepal and Bangladesh, anti-eviction movements in India, asylum seekers in Finland, and anti-war activists in the UK. She has been a visiting scholar in India (Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2011–2012), Nepal (Nepal Institute of Peace, 2012, 2014, 2020), Bangladesh (Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit based at the University of Dhaka, 2015), and Australia (University of Newcastle, 2019). Her research project 'Governance, Resistance and Neoliberal Development: Struggles against Development-Induced Displacement and Forced Evictions in South Asia' was funded by the Academy of Finland (2013–2016). 

She is the author of 'Globalising Resistance Against War?' (Routledge 2012) and co-editor of 'Arts-Based Methods for Decolonising Participatory Research' (Routledge 2021) and 'Civil Disobedience from Nepal to Norway' (Routledge 2022).  

She works as a university lecturer in Qualitative Research at the University of Lapland. She is the co-coordinator of the 'Global Northern Communities and Societies' research unit and the 'Migration in the Global Arctic' research network at the Faculty of Social Sciences. She is also a member of the Service Design Research Group CO-STARS at the Faculty of Art and Design.

She has the title of a docent (adjunct professor) of International Development Studies at the University of Jyväskylä. 

Currently, she serves as the Vice Chair (2023) of the Finnish Society for Development Research. 

Researcher info

Institution

University of Lapland

Department/faculty

Faculty of Social Sciences

Contact information

tiina.seppala@ulapland.fi
+358407262687

Keywords
activism arts-based methods bangladesh) development displacement ethnography feminist theory forced migration India internally displaced people post/decolonial theory refugees slum communities social movements south asia (nepal