University of Helsinki
Elina Penttinen is Senior lecturer and Director of Gender Studies Master’s programme at University of Helsinki. She has published widely on gender and violence in the context of global political economy, global mobility, intimate partner violence and emotional workplace abuse. Her recent publications in the International Feminist Journal of Politics have focused on normalization of emotional abuse and psychological violence in the context of feminist academic and activist spaces as well as in response to abusive relationships. She is the co-author of Emotional Workplace abuse, a new research approach (2019), Gender and Mobility: a critical introduction (2017), and author of Joy and International Relations: a new methodology (2013) Routledge. Her areas of expertise in research and teaching are feminist methodology, gendered violence, creative analytic writing, and contemplative pedagogies.
Saila Poutiainen is University Lecturer and Director for the Master’s Programme in Intercultural Encounters. She is a communication scholar specializing in ethnography of communication, cultural and intercultural communication, and interpersonal communication. She has published on intimate (dating, marriage) and institutional (advising) relationships, Finnish communication culture, and relational dialectics. In the network, she focuses on cultural features of hurtful communication. Her recent co-authored article in Communication Education titled “’We don’t say that word out loud’: a grounded practical theory for analyzing difficult data in language and social interaction classrooms” looks at the ways in which to examine e.g. derogatory language in LSI teaching.
Alexandra Bergholm is a University Lecturer in the Study of Religion at the University of Helsinki. Her work focuses on the history of religion, and she has published on topics related to death and commemoration, cultural memory studies, and the materiality of religion. Her research interests also include issues of spiritual abuse, especially in the context of the Catholic Church.
Natalie Kouri-Towe is an Associate Professor and Program Director for the Interdisciplinary Studies in Sexuality program at the Simone de Beauvoir Institute at Concordia University, in Montreal, Quebec. Her research has been published in both academic and non-academic venues on topics related to affect theory, solidarity, kinship, queer activism, trigger warnings, gender and sexuality pedagogies, masculinity, and transnational responses to war in the Middle East. Her edited collection, Reading the Room: Lessons on Pedagogy and Curriculum from the Gender and Sexuality Studies Classroom, is forthcoming (Fall 2024) with Concordia University Press, and she is currently working on a book manuscript on feminist and queer solidarity under neoliberalism.
Oula Silvennoinen is a historian and an associate professor in the University of Helsinki. Currently, he is also working as an expert with the Finnish Committee for Public Information to chart and draw up nationwide recommendations against the harassment faced by researchers and experts in their work. He has published a wide range of works on subjects like the history of policing and police institutions, the Holocaust and antisemitism, and the historical and modern far right.