Johanna Kantola – Professor of European Societies and their Politics, Centre for European Studies, University of Helsinki

Johanna Kantola is the Professor of European Societies and their Politics in the Centre for European Studies, University of Helsinki. She is a leading scholar on gender, politics and the European Union. She directed the European Research Council (ERC) funded Consolidator Grant project EUGenDem which studied the European Parliament’s political groups’ gendered practices and policies. She is the Distinguished Visiting Professor of Gender and EU Studies in the University of Tübingen, Germany (2022-2024). Kantola obtained her PhD in Politics at the University of Bristol in 2004 and became Docent in Politics at the University of Helsinki in 2007. She was the Professor of Gender Studies in the Tampere University (2017-2022). Her work has been published in several leading journals in the field including American Political Science Review, European Journal of Political Research, Journal of Common Market Studies, Social Politics, and Politics & Gender to mention a few.

Research interests:
– European integration
– European Union, actors, institutions, governance
– European Parliament, political groups
– Gender and politics
– Gender equality policies, intersectionality
– Democracy, equality, anti-gender politics, feminist responses

Research projects include the European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator grant funded Gender, party politics and democracy in Europe: A study of European Parliament’s party groups (EUGenDem) project (2018-2023). Kantola is the PI in the University of Helsinki in the Horizon Europe CCindle project (2022-2026) studying feminist responses to anti-gender opposition in Europe. She was the director of the Academy of Finland (2016-2020) and University of Helsinki Research Funds (2015-2017) funded research project Gender and Power in Reconfigured Corporatist Finland (GePoCo).

Publications include for example monographs Gender and Political Analysis (with Emanuela Lombardo, Palgrave, 2017), Gender and the European Union (Palgrave, 2010) and Feminists Theorize the State (Palgrave, 2006). Kantola has co-edited European Parliament’s Political Groups in Turbulent Times (Palgrave, 2022, with Petra Ahrens and Anna Elomäki); Handbook of Feminist Governance (Edward Elgar, 2023, with Marian Sawer, Lee Ann Banaszak, Jacqui True); Social Partners and Gender Equality: Change and Continuity in Gendered Corporatism in Europe (Palgrave 2022; with Anna Elomäki and Paula Koskinen Sandberg); The Oxford Handbook on Gender and Politics (Oxford University Press, 2013, with Georgina Waylen, Karen Celis and Laurel Weldon), Gender and the Economic Crisis in Europe: Politics, Institutions and Intersectionality (Palgrave 2017, with Emanuela Lombardo), Tasa-arvopolitiikan suunnanmuutoksia: Talouskriisistä tasa-arvon kriiseihin (Gaudeamus 2020, with Paula Koskinen Sandberg and Hanna Ylöstalo); Tasa-arvo toisin nähtynä: Oikeuden ja politiikan näkökulmia tasa-arvoon ja yhdenvertaisuuteen (Gaudeamus, 2012, with Kevät Nousiainen and Milja Saari) and Changing State Feminism (Palgrave, 2007, with Joyce Outshoorn).

Kantola is the founder and the book series editor of Palgrave Macmillan’s Gender and Politics Book Series with Sarah Childs.