Ongoing Projects
The following ongoing projects are affiliated with Research Centre on Transnationalism and Transformation (TRANSIT):
Exploring environmental aspects of relational wellbeing in the lives of young refugees
In this doctoral research project, Nick Haswell combines the disciplines of environmental and multicultural education to explore environmental aspects of relational wellbeing in the lives of young refugees. This project links with the broader international research project, Drawing Together, and zooms in on the complex and under-studied roles that the environment- including ‘natural’ and ‘built’ environment- play in enabling or inhibiting the wellbeing of young refugees settling in new countries, cultures and environments. The research draws on arts-based and traditional research methods to examine how environment-related elements emerge in young refugees’ visual (artmaking) and verbal (semi-structured interviews) expressions about relational wellbeing. The findings of this research may help to improve future decision-making when planning urban welfare services or urban school development for multicultural contexts.
For more information, contact Nich Haswell at firstname.lastname at tuni.fi
Building food literacy, food justice and foor sovereignty in Africa: from household to continent
Hunger and unequal food access in the wake of COVID, climate change, conflict and the capture of food systems by multi-national corporations are deeply entrenched in capitalism and colonial thinking. This appreciative participatory action research brings together young children and elders to forage, store, prepare and cultivate indigenous food and medicinal plants in multiple locations with diverse participants, local initiatives and groups. The relational theoretical framework links the labours of plants with the labours of people, drawing on ubuntu philosophy and other indigenous knowledge systems. This research builds on a recent African online conference and responds to the primary challenge of food justice and literacy. In the initial one-year funding period, two active citizen groups will start to engage in participatory action research with the aim of creating change through collaboration. The focus will be on practical activities and conversation. Through dialogue, this project will initiate and contribute to building a meshwork of independent networks, including existing initiatives, governmental bodies, NGOs, citizen groups etc. for mutual learning, conversation, and action across Africa. It will reinvigorate intergenerational story-telling especially around heritage food practices. The local learnings will be documented both in an online atlas, such as the Feral Atlas (by Anna Tsing) and made freely available in paper atlas format. Low data digital formats will also be explored.
The project is led by professor Zsuzsa Millei with seed funding during 2022 provided by GINTL (Ministry of Education and Culture’s Global Innovation Network for Learning and Teaching).
For more information contact Norma Rudolph at firstname.lastname at tuni.fi or Professor Zsuzsa Millei.
Funding: Academy of Finland, Research Council for Culture and Society
Microbial Childhood Collaboratory (MCC)
The Microbial Childhood Collaboratory is an interdisciplinary research group experimenting with ideas in a collective manner using slow science principles. The group is composed of a community artist and researchers working on the fields of environmental ecology and health, international relations, sociology, anthropology, childhood studies, social work, and early childhood education.
The project takes a “thinking microbially” approach which means paying attention to biological as well as sensory ecology combining biological and social perspectives. By ‘thinking microbially’, we connect current social and political theorizing with biological and ecological knowledge about the child and childhood. We also work with metaphors of the cellular level of the human microbiome and immune function in parallel with the grand scale of the concept of Gaia (Earth organisms) and seek to rapture the self/other division from this perspective.
The aims of our exploration are to take seriously in childhood research and practice the biosocial child as an ecosystem or ecology and as part of microbial and biospheric communities sustaining life and affording agencies. This work also necessitates – and joins others – in re-envisioning the ethics and politics of childhood related fields, including early childhood care, pedagogy and practice.
By combining science, art and activism, a Microbial Childhood Glossary, community artwork, and a new model for intergenerational future-making, we seek to enliven childhood studies, political activism and practice to navigate contemporary challenges and opportunities in the wider Nordic society and beyond.
For more information, contact Professor Zsuzsa Millei, zsuzsa.millei@tuni.fi
Collaboratory members:
Zsuzsa Millei (Tampere University, Finland) Sarah Alminde (Roskilde University, Denmark)
Asta Breinholt (Roskilde University, Denmark) Eva Bubla (Artist / Activist, Hungary)
Riikka Hohti (University of Helsinki, Finland)
Stefanie Fishel (University of Sunshine Cost, Australia)
Sami Keto (University of Oulu, Finland)
Nick Lee (University of Warwick, UK)
Parinaz Poursafa (Tampere University, Finland
Marja Roslund (Natural Resources Institute, Finland)
Erika Saarivara (University of Lapland, Finland)
Spyros Spyrou (European University, Cyprus)
Tuure Tammi (University of Oulu, Finland)
Hanne Warming (Roskilde University, Denmark)
Tampere Municipality, Elli Rasimus, Director of Early Childhood Education
The civic potential of climate mobility (HUMANE–CLIMATE)
HUMANE–CLIMATE explores the potential of critical pedagogical interventions and youth climate action to raise awareness of climate mobility and encourage equitable encounters within ‘the humanitarian border’, in the empirical contexts of Athens, Greece and Tampere, Finland. It approaches the dilemma of how young can learn to understand and respond to climate change and forced mobility, through three research questions: 1) How is the European Union preparing for the increasing climate mobility and how do Greece and Finland position themselves in this policy framework? 2) How are attitudes toward climate mobility impacted by a change of perspective from territorially-based world view, stressing borders and bordering, to a relational world view emphasizing connectedness and interdependency? 3) Can critical environmental citizenship, based on a relational understanding of climate mobility, be fostered through encounters between youths with and without recent migrant background?
Researchers: Kirsi Pauliina Kallio (PI, leader of RT1), Aila Spathopoulou (leader of RT2), Kimmo Härmä (postdoctoral researcher), Maria Sulonen (research assitant RT1), Nefeli Bami (research assitant RT2)
Duration: 1.9.2022–31.8.2026Funding: Academy of Finland, Research Council for Culture and Society
From Panic Solutions Towards Equal Refugee Education — Participation, Support and Inclusion of Students from Countries in Crisis (KOTI)
Questions related to refugees tend to be taboo in Finnish schools. Our project KOTI explores the possibilities and limits of Finnish refugee education, with an aim to challenge the idea of refugee education as an emergency measure and refugee students as temporary visitors to our schools. We investigate what a theoretically defined refugee education looks like in practice and how the educational and societal debate related to refugees can be renewed through research and art. Our study is founded on theories of practice. We perceive educational practices as interconnected, enabled, and constrained by cultural-discursive, material-economic, and social-political arrangements around them.
Our aim is to understand and change practices by means of participatory action research. We start with an extensive questionnaire and interview material already collected from teachers and school administrators who work with refugee students. We deepen our knowledge by interviewing the families of refugee students and implementing a series of interventions with teachers and students in schools in focus. At the same time, we observe classroom practices using praxeographic methods. Finally, the participating students are invited to communicate the information produced using the art form of their choice.
The created knowledge can change the practices of Finnish refugee education from being temporary panic solutions to sustainable practices that benefit refugee and non-refugee students alike. The longer-term goal is to promote a courageous and open discussion that could challenge the polarised ‘victim or hero’ narratives about refugees. The normalisation of the language and practices of refugee education in schools promotes a healthier attitude towards refugees wider in our society as well.
Researchers from Tampere University: Mervi Kaukko (Project Leader), Maria Petäjäniemi (Postdoctoral Researcher), Raisa Harju-Autti (Postdoctoral Researcher), Nick Haswell (Doctoral Researcher)
Other team members: Jenni Alisaari (Stockholm University), Leena Maria Heikkola (Åbo Akademi University) ja Sanna Mustonen (University of Jyväskylä)
The project is funded by Kone in 2022-2026.