FINTERDIS - Board of Directors 2024-25

Kirsi Cheas

President

My work is dedicated to analyzing and enhancing communication, collaboration, and integration of ideas across disciplinary, institutional, professional, and regional boundaries. I became an advocate for interdisciplinarity after running into obstacles when trying to integrate ideas as a doctoral student (2012-18). I am an at-large board member of the U.S.-based Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS) since 2019. My postdoctoral projects (Research Council of Finland & University of Vaasa 2021-24, Kone Foundation 2024-28) focus on collaborative investigative journalism across the U.S.-Mexico (Global North-South) border and the border between the Dominican Republic and Haiti, exposing abuses against asylum-seekers. Contact: kirsi.cheas(at)interdisciplinarystudies.org

Mikko A. Niemelä

Vice president

I work as a post-doctoral researcher in educational sciences at the University of Helsinki. I study disciplinarity and interdisciplinarity in education through the lenses of curriculum studies, didactics, sociology of education and philosophy of education.

Vilma Sandström

Vice president

I work as a research coordinator at the University of Helsinki enhancing inter- and transdisciplinary collaboration within and between different research networks. With a background in environmental sciences (PhD), interdisciplinarity has always been essential in my research. I have spent recent years as a postdoctoral researcher investigating food system's sustainability issues, particularly focusing on natural resource management and international food trade. I am interested in inter- and transdisciplinarity also a research topic and happy to share and discuss experiences and research ideas with FINTERDIS community.

Ruta Kazlauskaite

Board member

I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki. Trained as a political scientist, I am an interdisciplinary scholar, working at the intersections of memory studies, media and communication studies, and political psychology. Through both ongoing and past projects, I examine perceptual as well as emotional engineering and memory politics in immersive digital storyworlds (VR/AR/MR). My scholarly work has been featured in prominent academic journals across disciplines, including Rethinking History, Memory, Mind & Media, International Journal of Heritage Studies, Journal of the Philosophy of History, Emotions and Society, and Ethnicities.  

Mikko Salmela

Board member

I am Associate Professor at the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen (until the end of 2024) and Docent and Senior Researcher (2025 onwards) in Practical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. My doctoral thesis (UH, 1998) was on the history of Finnish philosophy, and my path to interdisciplinarity began in my post-doctoral research on emotions that is an interdisciplinary research area itself. I first worked on normative issues relating to the authenticity and appropriateness of individual emotions, then focused on collective emotions and their functions in the dynamics of social groups, and, in recent years, have specialized in the research of emotional mechanisms and their role in the emotional dynamics of anti- and prodemocratic political movements where I actively collaborate with researchers from various social sciences and humanities disciplines across Europe; especially in the Horizon Europe consortium Politics of Grievance and Democratic Governance that I will lead from 2025 onwards. Besides being an interdisciplinary researcher, I am a researcher of interdisciplinarity where my main interest is the recognition in inter- and transdisciplinary researchers and the challenges of this recognition in contemporary academia and science policy. Finally, I proposed the term "transtieteisyys" as a Finnish translation of transdisciplinarity.

Harri Kettunen

Board member

I work as a project planner (2022-2025) at the Helsinki Term Bank for the Arts and the Sciences, promoting the expansion of the content of the Term Bank. I have conducted interdisciplinary research, especially in Mesoamerica, combining linguistics, writing systems research, history, archaeology, anthropology, art history, codology and ethnobiology. I have done fieldwork especially in indigenous languages, art history, archaeology and cave research in Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico. I have done vocabulary research especially on loanwords from Native American languages in different languages of the world. In terms of terminology, I am particularly interested in the semantic dimensions and temporal changes of terms, etymological research, interdisciplinarity and building bridges between different disciplines.

Mikko K. Heikkilä

Board member

I am one of the founding members of FINTERDIS from the year 2018, and since May 2024 a member of the Board. I was born and bred in Tampere, Finland. I defended my interdisciplinary PhD Thesis on the linguistic prehistory of Fennoscandia at the University of Helsinki in 2014. My PhD Thesis has so far been downloaded more than 50 000 times from the university database Helda. My research focuses on the evolution of languages and language-borne information. By now, I am a senior researcher of historical linguistics, onomastics, history and folk poetry. I am also acquainted with philosophy of science. I have taught five established disciplines on the faculty level. Since 2021 I have been working at UiT The Arctic University of Norway as a Senior Lecturer in Kven and Finnish linguistics. I acted as Head of the discipline from 2022 to 2023. I have had a Title of Docent in interdisciplinary diachronic linguistics at the University of Tampere since 2018.

Jori Grym

Board member

Dr. of Economics and Business Administration, Business Economics, Hanken School of Economics, Finland. I research how human beings make choices using decision theory at the Hanken School of Economics and part of the behavioral economics research group at the Helsinki Graduate School of Economics. I'm especially interested in ethical decision making and moral judgement. I study these subjects in a broad context but lately have been concentrating in the world of digital money and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. My field of research, behavioral economics, is an interdisciplinary field that combines elements from psychology, social psychology and economics. Fascination with this field has given me an ongoing curiosity of interdisciplinary science and a thirst to learn from many schools of thought and science. I am also a member of the Heterodox Academy, which cultivates diversity of thought among academia.

Johanna Ylipulli

Board member

I am a Docent in Digital Culture, especially Anthropology of Technology, and currently working as a principal investigator at Aalto University's Department of Computer Science. The roots of my research lie in humanities and social sciences as I am trained as a cultural anthropologist. Since 2010, my general research approach has been based on so-called 'broad interdisciplinarity', which refers to collaboration between research fields that differ from each other in profound ways - on ontological, epistemological and methodological level. In other words, I have been combining anthropology and computer science by using design approaches and perspectives as a bridge. Thematically, my projects are focusing on digital inequality in smart cities, artificial intelligence in public services, and transdisciplinary research methods. Cities and urban environments have acted as my primary research context, and I consider myself as an expert in urban and design anthropology. Overall, I am interested in investigating how critically oriented anthropological thinking – with its capability to challenge normative structures and self-evident "truths" – can be successfully combined with design research and technology development. https://www.johannaylipulli.net/

Anna Jarske-Fransas

Deputy member

I work as a Project Planner at the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH) at University of Helsinki. At HSSH we are building a research culture that creates new multidisciplinary and inspiring research collaboration at the City Centre Campus and with partners outside the university. I'm also a Doctoral Researcher in the Doctoral Programme in Theology and Religious Studies working in a multidisciplinary research project bringing together the fields of study of religions, medicine, social sciences and sustainability sciences.

Anna-Leena Riitaoja

Deputy member

Ph.D. (Education) in 2013. Currently I work as a postdoctoral researcher in social work and am a member of the Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism, CEREN, in the Swedish School of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. My current research project focuses on social work professional knowledge in encounters between migrants and the welfare state.

Nina Strandén

Deputy member

I am studying to be a class teacher at University of Helsinki, aiming for the dual teaching qualification (class teacher and subject teacher of mathematics). I have also completed basic and intermediate studies in Special Education. Through my previous qualification as a Kindergarten Teacher and Head Teacher, I have 16 years' experience of working with children, students and colleagues in English.

(FINTERDIS WAS ON A BREAK 2022-24)


FINTERDIS Board of Directors 2021-22:


Kirsi Cheas, President, Founding member

My work is dedicated to analyzing and enhancing communication and collaboration across regional, disciplinary, institutional, and societal boundaries. My postdoctoral project focuses on cross-regional collaboration in investigative journalism. I specifically examine investigative collaboration related to abuses against asylum-seekers in the U.S.-Mexico border region. I am an At-large Board member of the Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS) and member of the Latin American NODO ESIT – Estudios sobre Interdisciplina y Transdisciplina -network. I wanted to found FINTERDIS so that interdisciplinarians in Finland would also have a better chance of gaining peer support, exchanging experiencias and ideas, and networking nationally and internationally.

Contact: kirsi.cheas (a t ) interdisciplinarystudies.org


Jori Grym, Board member

Master of Science (Economics and Business Administration), Business Economics, Hanken School of Economics, Finland. I research how human beings make choices using decision theory as a doctoral candidate at the Hanken School of Economics and part of the behavioral economics research group at the Helsinki Graduate School of Economics. I'm especially interested in ethical decision making and moral judgement. I study these subjects in a broad context but lately have been concentrating in the world of digital money and cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin. My field of research, behavioral economics, is an interdisciplinary field that combines elements from psychology, social psychology and economics. Fascination with this field has given me an ongoing curiosity of interdisciplinary science and a thirst to learn from many schools of thought and science. I am also a member of the Heterodox Academy, which cultivates diversity of thought among academia.


Jarkko Vikman, Board member

Doctoral candidate, University of Helsinki, Biblical studies.

My dissertation handles the evolution of religious expertise in the city of Ephesus during the first three centuries CE.



Harri Kettunen, Board member, Founding member

I carry out interdisciplinary research projects in Area and Cultural Studies at the University of Helsinki, combining history, linguistics, epigraphy, codicology, iconography, anthropology, archaeology, biology, and geography. Currently, my research and teaching focus is on topics related to Latin America and Mesoamerica, early globalization, comparative writing systems, Indigenous American languages, as well as interdisciplinary methodologies and research strategies.


Nina Strandén, Deputy Board member

I am studying to be a class teacher at University of Helsinki, aiming for the dual teaching qualification (class teacher and subject teacher of mathematics). I have also completed basic and intermediate studies in Special Education. Through my previous qualification as a Kindergarten Teacher and Head Teacher, I have 16 years' experience of working with children, students and colleagues in English. I travel often to USA, Florida to visit my relatives with my husband and children. I am very actively involved in many organizations. To mention few, I am a board member of Suvikyky, Support group of foreign language and immersion teaching of Finland and a member of Comprehensive School at Helsinki. I am also active in many University organizations developing teaching and preparing International programmes. My interests are education, languages, teaching methods, internationalization, agency, digitalization and special education



Ruta Kazlauskaite, Vice president

PhD (Political science). I am a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Media, Aalto University. My research interests include politics of history and mediated (re)presentation of contested pasts. As an interdisciplinary scholar, I work at the intersections of memory studies, media studies, heritage studies, philosophy of history, and embodied cognition. My current project examines the use of virtual reality in school-history education on difficult histories. I am a member of Systems of Representation research group at the Department of Media and the Virtual Cinema Lab at the Department of Film, Television and Scenography at Aalto University. I am also an affiliated researcher at the Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism at the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki.



Mikko Salmela, Board member

I am Associate Professor at the Center for Subjectivity Research at the University of Copenhagen and Docent in Practical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. My doctoral thesis (UH, 1998) was on the history of Finnish philosophy, and my path to interdisciplinarity began in my post doctoral research on emotions that is a multi-disciplinary research area itself. Within this area, I am interested in both theoretical and applied research. In recent years, my research has focused on collective emotions and their functions in the dynamics of social groups, on the role of emotions in interdisciplinary interaction, on the role of shared emotions in the construction of communality in urban housing; as well as on the emotional dynamics of populist political movements and polarization.



Mikko A. Niemelä, Board member

MSSc (Philosophy, Master's Degree Programme on Civil Society). Previously, I have worked as a teacher of humanistic and social studies in secondary schools. Currently, I am preparing a doctoral dissertation in educational sciences in curriculum integration. My particular interest is in multidisciplinary content and the challenges it poses for teachers.


Anna-Leena Riitaoja, Deputy board member, Founding member

Ph.D. (Education) in 2013. Currently I work as a postdoctoral researcher in social work and am a member of the Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism, CEREN, in the Swedish School of Social Science at the University of Helsinki. My current research project focuses on social work professional knowledge in encounters between migrants and the welfare state.

FINTERDIS Board of Directors 2020-21:

Kirsi Cheas

President


Jori Grym

Vice president


Mikko Salmela

Board member


Ruta Kazlauskaite

Board member

Jarkko Vikman

Board member


Mikko A. Niemelä

Board member


Nina Strandén

Board member


Anna-Leena Riitaoja

Deputy member


Harri Kettunen

Deputy member