Research projects 6

The overall objective of the SuFoRUn project is to develop new models, methods and decision systems that may effectively integrate currently fragmented multidisciplinary knowledge to support forest management and policy development in a context of global change. The European and the American experiences with the development/application of models and tools to support forest management and develop innovative forest policies provide a solid base for continuous improvement of its efficiency and effectiveness in a context of global change (e.g. changes in forest policies, changes in forest owner structures, changes in climatic conditions).

Eritrea Learning for All (ELFA) is a Higher Education Institutional Cooperation programme between Eritrea Institute of Technology (EIT) and the University of Jyvaskyla, Finland. The overall objective of ELFA is to enable EIT personnel develop their educational professional capacity in educational leadership and management, teacher education and pedagogy, learning related research methodology, use of ICT in education, literacy and numeracy learning, inclusive education and special needs education with a focus on learning difficulties. In collaboration with Finnish experts the EIT participants will design and pilot assessment tools and pedagogical programmes applied to the Eritrean context.

The objective of the study is to describe the complex and implicit process in which organizational culture are produced in the everyday working life. Drawing on the work of Schein (1992), I described organizational culture perceived by employees and analyze in three levels: artifacts (language, clothes) espoused values (prioritizing your work) and basic assumption (What’s the most important). From my ethnographic study at two large Chinese multinational companies located in Northwestern Europe, I found that Chinese and non-Chinese employees do not really communicate between each other, there are a lot of misunderstanding, tension, conflict on both side. My intention is to build dialog between Chinese and Western 1) experiences 2) theoretical models of organizational culture.

The concept of leadership is going through big changes. We have previously seen large changes in both the micro and macro levels of leadership. One of the key concepts to continue looking at would be the developing trends of virtualization and digitalization in regards to leadership. Long distance leadership especially through the internet, will be a fundamental skill required by future leaders. Digitalization is a common practice in many of today’s organizations, and mobile leadership is beginning to emerge as an equally important leadership tool. Working remotely from locations outside of the typical work environment is a growing trend within organizations and expert networks.

The ongoing CAPOLSA Phase II project completes the capacity building in CAPOLSA Phase I and needed for reaching the final goal of the ongoing action to help as many children as possible in Sub-Sahara Africa to learn the basic skills, and be able to have appropriate reading skills to acquire functional literacy by being offered appropriate reading material. Together with the training of coordinators for distribution of literacy support throughout Zambia and its neighbouring countries, the project builds skills and networks to overcome the complete lack of reading material which children who have just learned to read have to have. 1. The Capolsa Centre works as a national help centre in Zambia for the tens of thousands of first grade teachers who will be using small tablet computers that Grapholearn Initiative for optimal learning results as well as the learning-game based reading practicing environments (Graphogame). It also serves as the whole Sub-Saharan resource centre in order to extend the reach of their expertise eventually to all the countries in Sub-Sahara area.

  • Head of research Pirjo Virtanen
  • Language n/a

In Latin America indigenous peoples have turned into significant political actors. This project examines how the new forms of indigenous leaderships connect to the questions of power, and consider how they are interpreted from a native point of view. The studied groups are two Arawak-speaking groups living in Western Amazonia, Brazil. In looking at the way these two groups view their spokespeople and create new political, cultural, and economic partnerships, the aim is to explore the Amerindian way of producing different bodies, authority, and agency. The research also addresses historical changes of leadership as part of other social and political processes in the past and present. The main research questions are the following: 1) What are the new forms of leadership in Amazonian native communities? 2) How can acting in new interethnic networks be understood as a new type of human-to-human relation in Amazonian sociocosmology? 3) How have social roles hold by the young indigenous people changed their communities? 4) What are the differences between young female and male native leaders? 5) How have Amazonian leaderships changed taking into account environmental changes, economic, political, social, and legal processes?