Director

Support desk

Kirsi Sainio

Administrative director +358 40 668 5904

  • Secretary of the Board of Directors and Board of Administration
  • Financial and human resources management
  • Coordination of publication production
  • Subeditor and layout of the Siirtolaisuus-Migration quarterly
  • Miscellaneous graphic works (layout and image processing of publications, invitations, brochures, etc.)

Mika Orjala

Research Funding Specialist +358 40 120 4409

MSc

  • Support in applying research funding
  • Grant Writing
  • Support in implementation and reporting of projects
  • Fundraising for the Migration Institute of Finland

 

Jarno Heinilä

Archivist +358 40 631 3042

BA

  • Reception, acquisition and management of and access to archival materials
  • Information service: Migration Collections, Emigrant register
  • Tasks related to the management of the organization’s archive

Merja Skaffari-Multala

Anniversary year coordinator

50th anniversary of the Migration Institute of Finland 2024

Katri Kanervo

Information specialist +358 40 130 4681

MA

  • Information services
  • Library: Information search, collection management, acquisition, cataloguing, customer service, inter-library loans
  • Classification and storage of electronic data and traditional written information material
  • Communications: Daily communications, press releases, newsletters, brochures, social media, website of the Migration Institute of Finland, media monitoring
  • Tasks related to event production
  • Tasks related to publication production

Krista Mielismäki-Kettunen

Management assistant +358 40 724 9802

BBA

  • Financial administration
  • IT support
  • Office tasks

Research and information service

Marja Tiilikainen

Research Director, Senior Research Fellow +358 40 684 3814

PhD, Associate professor

  • Cross-border immigrant families and family practices
  • Illness and healing as cultural phenomena
  • Religious everyday life
  • Family separation and everyday security
  • Somali diaspora
  • Research Integrity Adviser at the Migration Institute of Finland

ORCID

Tomas Hanell

Senior Research Fellow +358 40 120 4573; +358 45 651 9120

D.Sc (Tech)

  • Domestic migration
  • Regional development
  • Geography of quality of life
  • Statistical indicators and the politics of measurement

ORCID

Samira Saramo

Senior Research Fellow +358 40 355 5816

Ph.D., Associate Professor

  • Migration and Ethnicity in Canadian and United States History
  • Place-making and Community-building
  • Histories of Experience and Emotion
  • Settler Colonialism and Migration
  • Transnational Death and Mourning
  • Transdisciplinary Methodologies

ORCID

Markku Mattila

Senior Research Fellow +358 44 259 2447

PhD, Associate professor

  • Population policy
  • Minorities
  • Migration
  • Social history
  • History of science and ideas

ORCID

ResearchGate

Eveliina Lyytinen

Senior Research Fellow +358 400 219 184

DPhil, Associate professor

  • Forced migration
  • Exile
  • Deportation of asylum seekers
  • Qualitative research methods
  • Research ethics
  • Urban exile
  • Deputy Research Integrity Adviser at the Migration Institute of Finland

ORCID

Magnus Enlund

Project manager +358 44 559 2447

MA, doctoral student

  • Finland-Swedish migration

 

Mika Raunio

Research Fellow +358 44 925 5042

LicSc (Admin)

  • Migration and regional development
  • International migration of talent
  • Regional attraction
  • Emerging economies

ORCID

Toni Ahvenainen

Junior Research Fellow +358 40 164 6762

MSSc                           

  • Urbanisation
  • Regional development
  • Project communication
  • EN

Sari Vanhanen

Research Fellow +358 40 163 4890

D. Soc. Sc., adult educator

  • Multi-agency collaboration
  • Two-way integration
  • Professional knowledge and guidance related to ethnic, linguistic and cultural diversity

ORCID

Elli Heikkilä

Research director emerita +358 40 069 5452

PhD, Associate professor

  • Immigrants in the labour market
  • Multicultural marriages
  • International students
  • Unaccompanied refugee children
  • Expatriate Finns
  • Internal migration
  • Regional development

ORCID
ResearchGate

Linda Bäckman

Research Fellow +358 40 6857413

PhD

  • Multilingualism
  • Language and identity
  • Narrative research
  • Superdiversity and integration
  • New speakers of minority languages
  • Research and social activism

ORCID

Camilla Marucco Al-Mimar

Research Fellow +358 406 739 120

PhD

  • Refugeehood and citizenship
  • Temporalities
  • Feminist methodologies
  • Research ethics
  • Chairperson, ETMU ry
  • Co-coordinator with Leonardo Custódio, Activist Research Network
  • Board member, We See You ry

ORCID

Pihla Siim

Research Fellow +358 40 129 3539

PhD

  • Transnational families
  • Narrative research
  • Children and mobility
  • Estonians in Finland
  • Effects of the threat of deportation on families
  • Migration and intimate relations

 

ORCID

 

Rewan Kakil

Artist +358 40 704 9226

Visual artist

  • Photography
  • Videography
  • Directing
  • Musician
  • Video editing

 

Ahmed Zaidan

Artist +358 40 685 7561

Bachelor of Arts in Translation (BA), University of Mosul

  • Poetry
  • Creative writing
  • Refugeehood

 

Erna Bodström

Research Fellow +358 40 678 2021

D. Soc. Sc.

  • Refugeehood and residence permits
  • Asylum process
  • Asylum politics
  • Asylum activism
  • Integration and citizenship
  • Administrative texts
  • Textual and visual methods

ORCID

 

 

 

Pekka Kettunen

Senior Research Fellow

D. Soc. Sc., Associate professor

  • Organisation
  • Implementation and evaluation
  • Comparative study
  • Municipal research
  • Integration

ORCID

Tuire Liimatainen

Senior Research Fellow

PhD

  • Ethnicity
  • Identity and belonging
  • Diasporas and transnational communities
  • Ethnopolitics and minority activism
  • Sweden-Finns
  • Expatriate Finns
  • Digital media

ORCID

 

 

 

Jaana Palander

Senior Research Fellow

Dr. (Admin)

  • Migration management
  • Migration law
  • Basic and human rights
  • Family reunification
  • Legal aid

ORCID

Yasmin Samaletdin

Interaction Coordinator – SRC funded Mobile Futures project

M.A. (Ed.)

Coordination, communication and interaction of the SRC funded Mobile Futures project

Visiting researchers and visitors

Nina Carlsson

Senior Research Fellow

PhD

  • Citizenship and naturalization
  • Language and civic knowledge testing
  • Linguistic justice
  • National minorities
  • Mainstreaming of the far right
  • Deportability
  • Critical policy analysis

Jeffrey Wall

Senior Research Fellow

PhD

  • Ethno-ecology
  • Cultural value of environmental quality
  • Slow-Onset environmental migrations
  • Indigenous-led conservation
  • Gendered ecological knowledge

Juha Tainio

Visitor +358 440 4706 13

Journalist

  • Oskari Tokoi
  • Ragnar Lassinantti
  • Swedish-Finns and Swedish-Finnishness
  • Northern language borders

 

 

Also at the moment

Also at the moment

Mimosa Suontama, research assistant
mimosa.suontama@migrationinstitute.fi

 

Iida Pulkkinen, archives trainee
iida.a.pulkkinen@utu.fi

 

Ella Nybäck, intern
ella.nyback@migrationinstitute.fi

 

Paola Arizaga Salazar, research assistant
paola.arizagasalazar@migrationinstitute.fi

 

Jenni Kyrövaara, library trainee
jenni.kyrovaara@migrationinstitute.fi