Tiina Seppälä
University lecturer, docent
Summary
Dr. Tiina Seppälä is a university lecturer in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki 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 is a lecturer in Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki and docent (adjunct professor) at the University of Jyväskylä. Her PhD thesis in International Relations (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 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, University of Dhaka 2015) and Australia (University of Newcastle 2019).
She is the author of Globalizing 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 has served as the vice chair of the Finnish Society for Development Research (2019, 2023, 2024). She is a member of the Helsinki Inequality Initiative (INEQ) and an editorial board member of Journal of Resistance Studies, SAGE Open and Kosmopolis. Together with Sarah Murru, she co-coordinates the international Resistance Studies Network.
Researcher info
Institution
University of Helsinki
Department/faculty
Faculty of Social Sciences
Contact information
tiina.s.seppala@helsinki.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
Research projects
This project, funded by the Academy of Finland (2013–2016), provided theoretically innovative and empirically new and valuable knowledge of the complex dynamics between governance and resistance in the context of the dominant, neoliberal development paradigm. It studied social and political struggles in three countries in South Asia – Nepal, Bangladesh and India – by examining social movements that fight against forced displacement and slum demolitions – all caused by development projects. The project engaged critically in the debate on neoliberal development by analyzing problems related to it, charting possibilities for addressing hem, and offering alternative visions for socially, culturally and politically more sustainable models of development.