Our Speakers 2026

About me

Ann Hironaka is a Professor of Sociology at the University of California, Irvine, where she studies the global forces shaping peace, conflict, and environmental governance. Drawing on the sociology of world society, her research reveals how international institutions and transnational networks transform state behavior and the prospects for lasting peace. She is the author of Neverending Wars (2005), which examines how the international community inadvertently prolongs civil conflict in weak states, and Greening the Globe (2014), which traces the worldwide diffusion of environmental laws driven by global organizations and advocacy networks. Her book Tokens of Power (2017) revisits the evolving logic of modern warfare. Together, her scholarship illuminates the connections between global institutions, human security, and environmental sustainability and offers insights for building a more peaceful and ecologically resilient world.

About me

Research topics

• Memory and reconciliation, 
• Collective memory and forgiveness in post-conflict societies,
• Trauma-informed reconciliation,
• Commemorative practices and silenced narratives.

About me

Dr Benjamin Klasche is a lecturer in politics and international relations at Tallinn University. He is also Co-Director of the Central and Eastern European Security Hub and Senior Researcher at the European Horizon Twinning Project, A critical relational perspective on peace & security in CEE. An International Relations scholar at heart, his research also draws from Public Administration and Sociology. His research interests are IR and social theory, particularly relationalism and critical theories, climate change, and peace. His book, A Relational Approach to Governing Wicked Problems (Palgrave MacMillan 2023), co-authored with Peeter Selg and Georg Sootla, argues for a need to rethink governance as a process from the relational point of view to spur its potential for addressing these problems. His work has been published in International Studies Quarterly, International Relations, International Review of Sociology and International Studies.

About me

Eeva-Liisa Kiiskilä is a leading expert at the Peace Education Institute (Rauhankasvatusinstituutti) in Finland and a doctoral researcher at the University of Oulu. Her work focuses on advancing peace education in formal and non-formal learning settings through pedagogical development, educator training and international cooperation. Her expertise encompasses peace education, anti-racism, equality and equity, inclusive education and youth participation, with a particular focus on dialogue and transformative learning as foundations for building peace. Her doctoral research explores peace theories and intergenerational narratives of peace, examining how diverse understandings of peace can inform curriculum theory for peace education.

About me

Élise Féron is a Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at Ulster University, as well as the Director of INCORE (International Conflict Research Institute). She is also an associated senior research fellow at the Tampere Peace Research Institute, Tampere University in Finland.

Her main research interests include feminist peace research, diaspora politics, and the multiple entanglements between conflict, violence, and peace, including the long-term consequences of disappearances. She has three decades of experience researching these issues in Northern Ireland, Eastern Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Madagascar, the South Caucasus and Cyprus, among other places.

She is an editor-in-chief of the Journal of Disappearance Studies (Bristol University Press) and serves on the editorial boards of other journals. She is also a co-editor of the book series, Routledge Advances in Feminist Peace Research.  She has notably co-edited the Routledge Handbook of Feminist Peace Research (2021) and co-authored, with Tarja Väyrynen, Feminist Peace Research: An Introduction (Routledge, 2024).

About me

Holger Niemann is Senior Researcher at the Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg (IFSH), Germany. His research focuses on the United Nations, international norms and practices, the global governance of peace and security, multilateralism, humanitarian protection, and European peace and security orders. He is also working on co-creative and participatory methods as well as the relationship between science and society. Holger Niemann is the author of The Justification of Responsibility in the UN Security Council (Routledge, 2019), and his work has been published, among others, in Global Responsibility to Protect, International Studies Quarterly, and Review of International Studies.

About me

Joulia Strauss, artist and activist, lives and works in Athens and Berlin. born and raised as Mari, one of Europe’s last remaining indigenous cultures with a shamanic tradition, located at the very edge of Eastern Europe. Her sculptures, paintings, performances, drawings, and video works have been displayed in solo and group exhibitions at the Pergamon Museum and the Martin-Gropius-Bau, in Berlin, and at the Tate Modern, in London, as well as at the Tirana Biennale, the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, the Athens Biennale, the Kyiv Biennial, the ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, and documenta14, among others. She has co-edited “Gods and Writing around Mediterranean” with Friedrich Kittler, Peter Berz and Peter Weibel (Wilhelm Fink Publishing). She plays a reconstruction of an Ancient Greek lyre and sings healing songs in Ancient Greek, Mari, and many other languages. Strauss practices and teaches Việt Võ Đạo Kung Fu. In 2014 she founded Avtonomi Akadimia, a durational artwork and grassroots university that she organizes in the Akadimia Platonos, Athens.

About me

Katariina Mustasilta is a Senior Research Fellow in the European Union and Strategic Competition programme at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Her research covers countries’ internal conflicts, the EU’s external action in the realms of conflicts and threats to peace, and international conflict prevention and peace-building efforts. Her publications include academic articles in journals such as the Journal of Peace Research and European Foreign Affairs Review as well as more policy-oriented research reports and briefings.

She recently led FIIA’s project ‘Finland in Afghanistan 2001-2021’ that examined Finland’s engagement in the stabilisation and reconstruction efforts in Afghanistan. At the moment she focuses on European conflict prevention and management efforts in the time of strategic competition, European strategic cultures, and conflict analysis as a tool for water diplomatic efforts.

Prior to joining FIIA, Mustasilta worked at the EUISS, where she covered conflict research relevant to the EU’s integrated approach to conflicts and crises. Mustasilta holds a PhD in Political Science from the Government Department at the University of Essex. Her PhD focused on the role of traditional governance in sub-Saharan African countries’ internal conflicts.

About me

Kristin Bergtora Sandvik is Professor of Sociology of Law at the University of Oslo and Professor II in Sámi and Indigenous Peoples Law at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. She holds a Cand. Jur. from the University of Oslo and an S.J.D. from Harvard Law School. Her research focuses on peace and conflict, humanitarian governance, and the socio-legal dimensions of crisis, terrorism, and militarization. She leads the Critical Thinking on Peace Initiative (CRITPEACE) and has published extensively on humanitarian action, law, technology, and crisis governance, including the recent book Humanitarian Extractivism (Manchester University Press). Her current research explores defence procurement, the militarization of Sápmi, and Indigenous airspace governance, including the development of the concept of Aeropeace.

About me

Lasse Peltonen is a Professor of Environmental Governance and Conflict Resolution at the Department of Historical and Geographical Studies, University of Eastern Finland. He is also co-director of the International Master’s Programme in Environmental Policy and Law at UEF. His work revolves around environmental conflicts, conflict resolution and collaborative methods in the fields of natural resource use, conservation, and, recently, the green transition. In addition to his academic work, he is co-founder of Akordi Oy, a company specialising in environmental conflict resolution.

About me

Laura Huttunen is Professor of Social Anthropology at Tampere University, Finland. She has published largely on issues of migration and transnational communities, and she has conducted long-term ethnographic research among the Bosnian diaspora. For the last fifteen years, she has focused on issues related to missing and disappeared persons. Her research projects include one focused on the question of missing and disappeared persons in Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the more recent research project Governance and Grieving: Missing Migrants and Emerging Politics (DiMIg) funded by the Academy of Finland, focused on disappearances in migratory contexts. Her publications include the monograph Missing persons, political landscapes and cultural practices: Violent absences, haunting presences (2025 by Manchester University Press) and An Anthropology of disappearance: Politics, intimacies and alternative ways of knowing (Berghahn Books 2023), edited with Gerhild Perl, and a number of journal articles, including Missing and disappeared migrants: intimate voids and political vulnerabilities in the inaugural issues of the newly established Journal of Disappearance Studies in2025.

About me

Laura Junka-Aikio is Professor of Northern Politics and Government at the University of Lapland and the Academic Director of the university’s international MA programme in Arctic World Politics. She has previously held positions at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and at the Giellagas Institute for Saami Studies (University of Oulu). Her research is interdisciplinary and focuses on building decolonial and bottom-up perspectives on world politics, with a particular emphasis on Palestinian everyday resistance, Nordic colonialism, and Sámi Indigenous politics and rights. Her current research addresses Arctic militarization and its local impacts, especially in relation to Sámi culture, livelihoods and rights. In 2017, her article “Can the Sámi Speak Now? Deconstructive Research Ethos and the Debate on Who Is a Sámi in Finland” received the first Stuart Hall and Cultural Studies Award for Early Career Researchers.

About me

Louise Ridden is a postdoctoral research fellow on the PROMISE project at IFSH, and previously worked at Tampere Peace Research Institute in Finland (TAPRI). She hold a PhD from Aberystwyth University. Her work has been recently published by Edinburgh University Press as a monograph entitled ‘Nonviolent Encounters: Unarmed civilian protection through bodies, spaces, and times’.  Her current research interests include feminist political theories of violence and nonviolence, as well as the temporalities of war preparedness, particularly in the Nordic states.

About me

Dr. Marcela Douglas is Associate Professor in Peace and Conflict Studies at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. Her research focuses on peace, security and civil preparedness in Arctic and northern contexts, with particular attention to democratic resilience, youth participation and community responses to crisis. Her current work examines how preparedness can strengthen democratic capacity, including trust, participation and critical thinking. 

About me

Field of expertise

The past 18 years my focus has been on global responses to crises, such as the Indian Ocean Tsunami and armed conflict in Aceh, Indonesia and the 2001 Kachchh earthquake and in 2023-27 me and my EnVi(r)oCare (Entanglements of Violence and Care: feminist analysis of commodity frontiers and ’living green’) team will focus on the questions of justice of commodity frontiers of date palms and sisal fibres, ecological transitions, and ‘living green’.

I do transdisciplinary research, often combining ethnography with lifehistorical and archival research, promoting collaborative approaches to knowledge production across divides in languages, education, and forms of communication.

Research topics

• Feminist peace research
• Feminist political economy and ecology
• Global gender inequalities and their governance
• Intersection between development and post-disaster and post-conflict aid
• Critical disaster studies and climate justice

About me

I am a Research Director of Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI) and an academic director of MA programme in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research.

PI of PROFI7 Sustainable Security Practices (SUPRA) at Faculty of Social Sciences.

Field of expertise

My research in the field of peace and conflict research focusses currently on peace mediation and peacebuilding, multilateralism and changing global order, the idea of Nordic peace, and agonistic peace. In my research, I have also dealt with transnational encounters, identifications as well as perceptions of Europe’s imaginary dividing lines among others in the Baltic countries, the Nordics, the South Caucasus, Ukraine, and the Balkans.

Research topics

• Politics of Memory and Conflict Transformation
• Peace Mediation
• Agonistic Peacebuilding
• Multilateralism and global governance
• History of Peacemaking
• Ontological (In)security and Representations of Crises

About me

Matthias Wevelsiep serves as the Director of Programs and Operations at the Network for Religious and Traditional Peacemakers. Prior to his current post, Matthias was working on Finn Church Aid’s digital transition and was heading FCA’s Programme Development Unit. He is focused especially on the intersection of sustainable development and digitalization as well as on the humanitarian-development-peace nexus. Before FCA, he worked with CMI (Martti Ahtisaari Peace Foundation) and with Plan International Finland. Matthias has over 20 years of experience in international development cooperation and peacebuilding from Africa, Asia, and the Americas.

About me

Niko Humalisto holds a title on a Docent in Social Geography, especially Nature Policy, currently working as a senior climate specialist at Felm. His research has focused on the spatial and political construction of environmental governance, climate policy, climate finance and justice. Humalisto combines academic research with twenty years’ experience in policy processes and evidence-based advocacy. He has led and contributed to research as well as popularizing climate negotiation geopolitics, climate finance governance, disability inclusion and human rights. He leads the development NGOs collaboration platform on climate in Finland and is a member of the Finnish Development Policy Committee. Throughout the 2020s, he has operated as a technical expert to the climate advocacy of Act Alliance, a network of 140 humanitarian and development NGOs across the globe, and participated the UN climate negotiations.

About me

Petteri Vuorimäki is a Finnish diplomat who has been Finland’s first Special Envoy for Climate and Security in the Ministry for Foreign Affairs since September 2025. Before his current post he served as Finland’s Arctic Ambassador/Senior Arctic Official 2019-2025 (2019-2021 also Ambassador for the Antarctic). Between 2007-2019 he served in the European Commission Directorate General for External Relations (International Relations Officer, Unit for Relations with Russia and the Northern Dimension Polcy) and at the European External Action Service (Chair of COEST and COSCE Working Parties, Senior Expert).  His diplomatic postings for Finland between 1998-2007 include Permanent Representation for the EU in Brussels, Permanent Representation for the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Liaison Office in Pristina and Embassy in Moscow. 1993-97 he served for the International Organization for Migration in Geneva and Helsinki; 1989-93 Labour Administration and 1985-86 as Second Lieutenant in the Armed Forces. He holds M.Soc.Sc. and M.A from University of Tampere, Finland.

About me

Polly O. Walker is of Cherokee ancestry and a member of the New Mexico Cherokee Community. Assoc. Professor Emeritus of Peace and Conflict Studies at Juniata College, she also serves as Board Chair of the Indigenous Education Institute whose work supports ethical collaboration with Indigenous peoples and western scientists, supporting the revitalization of Indigenous knowledge systems. In 2026 she was a presenter at the Second Indigenous Peacebuilding Summit in NYC, highlighting the work of the Peacemakers Knowledge Collective at Ottowa Dialogue that brings together Native peacemakers and Western two track diplomats. She is a member of the International Peace Research Association council, currently serving as one of the Indigenous members. Walker earned her PhD at Australia’s University of Queensland where her research focused on conflict transformation between Aboriginal and non-Indigenous Australians. She was a director of the Peace and Conflict Studies Institute of Australia for 12 years. Polly is co-editor of the two-volume “Acting Together: Performance and the Creative Transformation of Conflict,” also contributing to the documentary “Acting Together on the World Stage,” and co-authoring the accompanying toolkit. She has published in a range of peer reviewed journals and edited volumes.

About me

Rauna Kuokkanen is Research Professor of Arctic Indigenous Studies at the University of Lapland (Finland) and Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on comparative Indigenous politics and law, Indigenous feminist theory and gender, Arctic governance and settler colonialism in the Nordic countries. She is the author or award-winning book Restructuring Relations. Indigenous self-determination, governance and gender (Oxford UP 2019) and a member of the Sámi Climate Council in Finland. 

About me

Risto Heikkinen (MA) works as a peace education advisor for the Finnish Evangelical Lutheran Mission (Felm) in Jerusalem, where he supports individuals and communities both locally and globally. In his work, he utilizes various approaches to peace education and psychosocial support to enhance the peace skills and capacity of young people and local communities. 

About me

Samin Rasouli is a Master’s student in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research at Åbo Akademi University. She is currently a core member of the Tampere Peace Network, a youth-led European Solidarity Corps project. She also previously worked as an Assistant Coordinator at Rauhankasvatusinstituutti (the Peace Education Institute), where she contributed to non-formal peace education in the Tampere region, particularly in the field of youth work. She completed her bachelor’s degree in Iran, where she first developed her interest in diversity and gender studies.

About me

Vadim Romashov is a Postdoctoral Researcher at Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI), Tampere University and a Visiting Researcher at the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Eastern Finland. He holds a Doctor of Social Sciences degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from Tampere University. His current research explores everyday insecurities of war-affected migrants, while his general research covers everyday practices of living together with differences, the problems of international peacebuilding, and the multifaceted societal effects of militarization. Vadim teaches courses on peace and conflict at the University of Helsinki and the University of Eastern Finland. He has been involved in various peace-promoting initiatives in the post-Soviet region and Finland as a dialogue facilitator, peace educator, and editor for collaborative research and multimedia projects. Vadim is the book review editor of the Journal of Disappearance Studies (Bristol University Press). For the Re-(E)MBody Project, he studies the implications of Finland-Russia cooperation on the issue of lost soldiers in the Second World War for reconciliation between the two countries.

About me

PhD researcher in Peace and Conflict Research at Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI). I hold a master’s degree in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research from Tampere University and completed another master degree in communication and journalism in Iran prior to studying in Finland.

Field of expertise

My research focuses on women’s rights activism in Iran and the possibility of working across differences. I wrote my MA thesis on Everyday Peace: Iranian Women’s Movement and Peaceful Transformation in Tapri and in my PhD I am exploring mechanisms of working across differences among Iranian women’s rights activists in Iran and in the diaspora.

Research topics

• Feminist Peace
• Decolonial Feminism
• Everyday peace
• Diaspora