Skip to main content
Suomeksi

Zsuzsanna Millei

Professor, Early Childhood Education
Faculty of Education and Culture | Education
Tampere University
zsuzsa.millei [at] tuni.fi (zsuzsa[dot]millei[at]tuni[dot]fi)
+358401904031
City Centre Campus
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4681-6024
https://researchportal.tuni.fi/en/persons/zsuzsanna-millei/publications/

About me

I am interested in child politics in its broadest sense. I view early childhood education as both a biopolitical and national space, and childhood itself as a political form of being. I research everyday nationalism as well as childhood and children’s lives from a biosocial perspective. Within the Microbial Childhood Collaboratory, we understand the child’s body as biochemical, more‑than‑human, and porous to its environment, where biology and the biosphere intersect with social processes and power. This perspective attends to how agencies emerge, and to the matters and processes with which the biosocial child is entangled, from the microscopic to biospheric communities that undergo intensive anthropogenic changes today.

In my earlier research, I focused on children's bathrooms, everyday nationhood, Cold War divides and memories of childhood, ideologies and how knowledge production operates in academia. I am also passionate about creating kind and caring academic cultures both in our current projects, as the leader of research groups and through TRANSIT Research Centre where I am the Chair of the Steering Group.

Responsibilities

I am the leader of the Early Childhood Education Institutions, Policies and Practices (ECEPP) research group, and co-leader of Child politics and Child and Learning Ecology research groups.

I lead the Microbial Childhood: Restor(y)ing Daycare Ecologies project funded currently by Kone Foundation (2026-2030) and previously by Nessling Foundation (202400154) ( and the ‘Friendly Microbes: Health-Promoting Preschool Practice for Young Children and the Planet’ funded by Stiftelsen Brita Maria Renlunds minne sr (nr. 7187). 

I also lead the Microbial Childhood Collaboratory network funded by Nordforsk (2022-2023) (345269). 

I co-led the De-colonial and De-Cold War Dialogues on Childhood and Schooling project. It sub-project titled Re-Connect / Re-Collect: Crossing the Divides through Memories of Cold War Childhoods received funding from KONE Foundation (201804719). 

Project links

Research career

Before working in my current position, I was working at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and as a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Social Research at Tampere University. I also had several Visiting Fellow positions, including at Gothenburg and Linköping Universities Sweden; University of Sunshine Coast, Australia; Martin Luther University of Halle-Wittenberg, Germany; Centro de Investigacion y de Estudios Avanzados del Institutio Politecnico Nacional Departmento de Investigaciones Educativas Coordinacion Academica, Mexico; University of Debrecen, Hungary; University of Lehigh, USA. 

Latest publications

All publications

Own links