Annalisa Sannino is Professor at the Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University. Her research focuses on collective learning and transformative agency formation processes in educational settings, workplaces and communities. Her work is increasingly recognized as a substantive contribution to the field of cultural-historical activity theory and formative intervention methods. The settings of her empirical interventionist research have included schools, university libraries, municipal home care services and a hospital. Changes in these contexts were triggered by the introduction of new technologies and by emerging new needs among students, clients and patients. Her analyses trace how actors in these contexts collectively created and took into use their own designs to shape transformations. Results of her research have appeared in numerous publications including three edited books, by Cambridge University Press (2009, 2023) and Routledge (2013). She has an extensive record of mobility across international and interdisciplinary borders with long periods and appointments in American, French, and Italian universities. She currently holds visiting appointments at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, University West, Sweden and at Rhodes University, South Africa.
Hannele Kerosuo is Researcher at the Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University. She is also Docent in Organizational Pedagogy at University of Helsinki since 2011. She has been actively involved in the development of formative interventions and the Change Laboratory method since 2000 in the Centre for Research on Activity, Development and Learning CRADLE at University of Helsinki. She has published extensively on transformative agency, boundary crossing and expansive learning in organizations, particularly in health care, social welfare and construction industry. Kerosuo has worked in and led several major research projects and has extensive experience in doctoral and post-doctoral supervision.
Yrjö Engeström is Professor Emeritus of Adult Education at University of Helsinki, Finland and Professor Emeritus of Communication at University of California, San Diego. He is Director of the Center for Research on Activity, Development and Learning (CRADLE) which applies and develops cultural-historical activity theory in studies of transformations and learning in work and organizations. He has received an honorary professorship from University of Birmingham in UK and honorary doctorates from University of Oslo, Norway, and University of Ioannina, Greece.
Esa Jokinen (D.Soc.Sc, Social Psychology, 2017) joined RESET as Postdoctoral Researcher in the project “Collective Professional Agency in Finnish Housing First Work” funded by the Finnish Work Environment Fund in collaboration with the City of Tampere and Y-Foundation. His article-based doctoral dissertation focused on evaluation and local government personnel amidst organisational change.
Pauliina Rantavuori is a researcher in the Doctoral Programme Education & Society. Last 20 years she has been working as a special education teacher and special planner in the Education Division in the city of Helsinki. Her dissertation is part of the research project “In search for the significance: Fostering movement across the five worlds of adolescents” funded by the Academy of Finland (PI: Professor Emeritus Yrjö Engeström). Her dissertation focuses on ways to counteract experiences of school-related alienation and marginalization among adolescents with the help of conceptual tools from activity theory and the Change Laboratory method.
Dimitrios Prokopis is an educator and recently completed a Master’s thesis at the Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University titled “Toward a new beginning: Expansive learning in a youth housing unit.” The main results of his research were published as an article in the Journal of Workplace Learning
Emma Kärki joined RESET as Research Assistant in the RESET project on the Fourth Generation of the Change Laboratory method, in collaboration with the MTT research group and supported the Faculty of Education and Culture Strategic Funding 2021. She was subsequently employed by the City of Jyväskylä on behalf of RESET to research the uptake and further development of the Multi-Professional Mobile Support Innovation originally designed in a Change Laboratory conducted in our faculty and which became part of the official policy of the City of Tampere. Currently a Master’s student at the faculty, she is inspired by continuous learning and her academic interests include psychology, organizational learning, knowledge management, personnel management and personnel development. She has previously worked in personnel support services in the construction industry.
Hien Dinh is working on her Master’s thesis at the Faculty of Education and Culture, Tampere University. Prior to that, she was a language instructor at the University of Languages and International Studies, Vietnam National University, where she acquired an interest in teacher education and professional development. Inspired by the conceptual and methodological framework of Transformative Agency by Double Simulation, she is currently using it to explore and support teacher agency in Vietnamese curriculum reform.
Saara Pitkälä holds an MA in Education and is currently working in the ongoing GINTL China project of RESET in collaboration with the College of Elementary Education, Capital Normal University, Beijing.
Joona Moberg joined RESET as Research Assistant in the project “Collective Professional Agency in Finnish Housing First Work” funded by the Finnish Work Environment Fund in collaboration with the City of Tampere and Y-Foundation. Currently a Master’s student in educational science at Tampere University, he is interested in development of academic and professional expertise among individuals and collectives by means of formative interventions and adopting the concepts of cultural-historical activity theory.
Heli Norolahti is a Master’s student in Social Work at Tampere University. Her thesis is an ethnographic study of the professional culture of recovery in a supported housing unit for clients with a history of homelessness. She has previously worked with young offenders in the Criminal Sanctions Agency (RISE).
Terhi Esko (M. Soc. Sc. Sociology), defended her PhD in Education in 2020 at the University of Helsinki with a thesis on “Societal Problem Solving and University Research: Science-Society Interaction and Social Impact in the Educational and Social Sciences”. Her previous research themes include science, technology and innovation policy, comparative studies of research organizations, and public service production. Terhi Esko has skills in qualitative content analysis, framing, and narrative methods. She has published in journals including Science and Public Policy, Minerva, and International Journal of Contemporary Sociology.
Anne Laitinen is writing a dissertation based on data collected during the first replication of the Vygotskian “waiting experiment”. Her Master’s thesis on transformative agency by double stimulation received the University of Helsinki Faculty of Behavioural Sciences Master’s Thesis Award in June 2011. In 2012 she obtained a Licentiate degree, with distinction, with the thesis “Double stimulation and agency in the experiment of the meaningless situation.” She has been involved in several Change Laboratory intervention studies since 2008.
Niina Mykrä (M. Soc. Sc. Education), defended her PhD in Education in 2021 at Tampere University with a thesis on on the key societal role schools can play for ecological sustainability. She uses cultural-historical activity theory and the theory of expansive learning as theoretical framework. She is executive director of the Finnish Association of Nature and Environment Schools .
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Satia Zen is currently pursuing her doctoral studies in the Faculty of Education and Culture, focusing on the impact of an international teacher program from the perspective of the development of teacher identity. Prior to joining Tampere University, Satia worked as Program Coordinator for international teacher education, as a School Director in Sukma Bangsa School (Aceh, Indonesia) and as teacher trainer. Satia’s academic interests include teacher education and professional development, internationalisation of education, school development with public private partnership and education in post conflict settings.
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