The University of Eastern Finland is one of the largest universities in Finland. The campuses are located in Joensuu and Kuopio, and host approximately 15.500 students and 2.500 members of staff. The UEF is a top 300 university in several international rankings. UEF is involved in an internationally leading interdisciplinary social science and regional research. The Karelian Institute (KI) of UEF is a multi-disciplinary and international recognized research unit focusing on regional development, cultural studies, borders and migration. The KI researchers participate in nationwide and international research networks and groups. In addition to their own research, the researchers work as experts in various projects and communities and participate in the public debate in Finland and globally.
Dr. Jussi P. Laine
Project Coordinator, is an Associate Professor of multidisciplinary border studies at the Karelian Institute of the University of Eastern Finland and holds the title of Docent of Human Geography from the University of Oulu, Finland. Currently, he also serves as the President of the Association for Borderlands Studies (ABS) and in the Steering Committee of the IGU’s Commission on Political Geography. Laine is a human geographer, yet in his approach to migration he combines influences also from international relations and geopolitics, political sociology, history, anthropology and psychology.
Dr. Olga Davydova-Minguet
Associate professor, holds a PhD in folklore studies. Her main research interests lie in migration, gender, ethnicity and media studies, and methodological and theoretical transnationalism. In her research, she concentrates on Russian-speakers in Finland and larger, outside Russian Federation. Within her studies, she has developed transnational view on societal processes related to (im)migration, with the strong emphasis on receiving society.
Dr. Pirjo Pöllänen
Pirjo Pöllänen holds a PhD in Social Policy. Her research focuses on migrants (Russian speakers, asylum seekers) in rural border areas in Finland and her understanding about rural area’s socio-economic developments is based on her long-term ethnographical fieldwork in Finnish-Russian border area in North-Karelia. She has analyzed how Russian-speaking immigrants in Finland have adapted to Finnish society and become part of the community in rural border areas.
Dr. Daniel Rauhut
Associate professor, holds a PhD in Economic History. He has evaluated outcome of local integration policy programs, analyzed regional settlement patterns of refugees and labor migrants and the regional impact of immigrant entrepreneurship in rural Sweden. He has also studied regional development and regional development policies, and the attractiveness of rural, peripheral and remote areas. He masters both quantitative and qualitative methods.
Lauri Havukainen
Lauri Havukainen works as Research Assistant. He studies sociology.
Alicja Fajfer
Alicja Fajfer is a Management Assistant. She has experience in project work focusing on migrant integration and rural development. She holds a PhD in culture research.