About me
I am interested in child politics in its broadest sense. I view early childhood education as a political, intergenerational, national and global space, childhood as a political form of being, and children as political actors with rights. Researching from these perspectives the institutional practices in preschools allows to view children as societal actors and to gain insights into how societal structures and discourses operate in children's everyday experiences and their becoming as child, and how we can add to social theorizing with children in mind.
I employ comparisons of different places and times to help highlight the taken for granted ways everyday nationhood, Cold War divides, ideologies and knowledge production operates. More recently in an experimental project titled ‘Microbial childhoods’, we thinks together with multidisciplinary scholars about children and childhood as part of biospheric communities. I am also passionate about creating kind and caring academic cultures both in our current projects and through TRANSIT Research Centre where I am the Chair of the Steering Group.
Responsibilities
I am the co-leader of the Early Childhood Education Institutions, Policies and Practices (ECEPP) research group.
I also co-lead the De-colonial and De-Cold War Dialogues on Childhood and Schooling project. It subproject titled Re-Connect / Re-Collect: Crossing the Divides through Memories of Cold War Childhoods received funding from KONE Foundation (201804719) (EUR 319,000)
I am also leading the Microbial Childhood Collaboratory network funded by Nordforsk (345269) (EUR 43,000)