Cartography of my research interests
My research could be characterised as multi-voiced and multidisciplinary. It provides new openings, theoretisations and critical analysis of sociology and politics of education, changing education governance and political agency.
Themes such as precision education, governance, marketisation, privatisation, psychologisation, social exclusion and societal differences, discrimination, marginalization and inequalities have been the focus of my publications. I have analysed societal power relations and agency perspectives at universities and in research, vocational education, teacher training, youth work, adult education and in public sector development activities. Central results of my research have been in empirically-grounded theoretical considerations and developing further understanding of social justice as multifaceted political, historical, philosophical, economic, cultural and social phenomenon.
I guess I could argue that my most intensive theoretical and methodological development has focused on the consequences of marketisation, ethos of vulnerability, therapisation, psychologisation and projectisation. This has lead to several international articles and collaboration. I have not been afraid to study difficult topics such as affects of neoliberalism, ‘disturbing’ behaviour and pathologisation, social exclusion of ‘at risk’ youth, the situation of young people in prison and afterwards, heteronormativity or leeway in market-oriented development work. One of the most important aims has been to break the vicious cycle of individualisation of societal problems revealed in both educational policies and in practices.
With our international CRISP-research group in the AGORA-research centre we combine sociological, philosophical, cultural, feminist, historical, social, political and economic perspectives in order to study social change and transformations in education and beyond. Our research offers theoretical, conceptual and methodological understanding for the future trajectories of education especially in relation to the changing governance, diversification of populations, social justice/participation, and equality. We tackle with several acute questions in education, such as precision education governance, privatisation, marketisation, commercialisation, psychologisation, medicalisation, digitalisation, datafication, democracy and inequalities.
We are a proactive group and consider our research politically relevant because it helps to highlight the contradictions of policies and practices of education and the related potential for change. Our research supports a deeper understanding of how societal differences such as gender, age, ethnicity/race, sexuality, disability, precarity and health intersect in education. Bringing them together with perspectives of policies and practices of education, governance, power, and agency, and societal mechanisms of inequalities is a reason that makes our research unique. We aim to push research and educational sciences forward by challenging unquestionable orthodoxies that operate as if they were the objective truths.
Our theoretical work includes internationally recognized contributions to marketisation, privatisation, projectisation and the rise of psychological and therapeutic ethos and diagnostics in national and transnational education policies and practices as well as mapping rationalities and effects of global network governance in education. Our work freshens up governmentality studies with theories of political agency and resistance while deepening understanding of power relations without paralyzing to them.
We have coined and challenged inequalities in educational, transnational and cross-sectoral policies and educational practices. We have scrutinized governance of knowledge production together with effects of marketisation and neoliberalism. A part of our on-going work contributes to the philosophy of education with the ethos of vulnerability and with new theories of democracy and human subjectivity. We have contributed to the critical work of neoliberalism and knowledge formation in education with the idea of affective subjectivity, precarity and creation of counter politics.
We are curious towards the ways in which various kinds of societal shifts shape educational institutions, knowledge formation, social processes and lived experiences of students, teachers, researchers, children, young people and adults.
We have deconstructed and reconstructed educational policy steering, management and leadership as well as elaborated with critical, equality and feminist pedagogy in education. We have developed methodological work of discursive-deconstructive, ethnographic, participatory and nomadic research approaches.
See our AGORA for the study of social justice and equality -research centre’s netpages:
https://www2.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/agora-for-the-study-of-social-justice-and-equality-in-education
Selection of our research and development projects:
Director: Future Trajectories of Precision Education Governance (2019-2014)
https://blogs.helsinki.fi/futuredproject/news/
Director: Interrupting Youth Support Systems in the ethos of Vulnerability (2017-2021). Academy of Finland. https://blogs.helsinki.fi/cosupport/about/
Director: TASOVA – Promoting Regional Equality Work in Finland (2016-2019). European Social Fund.
Co-partner: Sukupuolen ja muut erot huomioivan tasa-arvosuunnittelun ja -työn sisältöjen kehittäminen Suomen opettajan- ja opinto-ohjaajan koulutuksiin (SetSTOP). Ministry of Education.https://setstop.wordpress.com/
Co-partner: Wellbeing and Policy Steering (2017-2018). Strategic research fund, Uni of Westminster.
Director: Youth on the Move – Revisiting the ‘ethos of vulnerability’ in an era of market-oriented education (2014-2017). (UH, Foundations, City of Helsinki). http://blogs.helsinki.fi/agora-sje/research/research-groups/#youth
Founding member. Justice through Education in the Nordic Countries. Nordic Centre of Excellence (2013-2018), Nordforsk. http://www.justed.org/
Co-partner: EIHE (Ethical Internationalism in Higher Education. Academy of Finland. http://www.oulu.fi/edu/eihe
Director: Bringing Critical Thinking into Life in the Academia (2013-2014), Teachers’ Academy. UH.