Tampere University

Docent Marja Vehviläinen, PhD, works as a university lecturer in Gender Studies. She is in charge of the research seminar in Science and Technology Studies, and she is an active member of the COST network on New Materialisms (2014-2018). She has worked as Professor in Gender and Technology at Luleå University of Technology. She has researched gender in ICT, women’s careers in science intermediaries (with Oili-Helena Ylijoki), and dialogic research communication. She has supervised more than 10 doctoral students and led several research projects, participated in two Nordic research networks, and published internationally and nationally.

Dr. Oili-Helena Ylijoki is a senior researcher at the Research Centre for Knowledge, Science, Technology and Innovation Studies (TaSTI) and adjunct professor of social psychology at Tampere University, Finland. She has investigated transformations of academic work, identities and careers, temporalities of knowledge production, disciplinary cultures and gender in academia. Her recent publications include (with Lea Henriksson) ‘Tribal, proletarian and entrepreneurial career stories: junior academics as a case in point’ (Studies in Higher Education 2017) and an edited book (with Paul Gibbs, Carolina Guzmán-Valenzuela and Ronald Barnett) Universities in the Flux of Time (Routledge 2015). 

Päivi Korvajärvi, Professor emerita in Gender Studies, Tampere University. Since the mid-1980s Päivi has led research projects on gendering practices in the changing world of work, labour and employment. Her particular focus has been on cultural and technological changes in clerical and white-collar work in public and private sector organizations. Currently she is the leader of an ethnographic study on how young adults reflect on their future. Päivi is particularly interested in what kinds of new forms gendered dynamics take in the neoliberal economy. Her publications include articles in Gender, Work and Organizations, Women’s Studies International Forum and the Handbook of Gender, Work and Organizations. Päivi is an expert member and a mentor of the Tampere Nordwit research group.

Dr. Tiina Suopajärvi works as a senior researcher in Nordwit. She is a cultural anthropologist specialized in the methodologies of ethnography, participatory action research and design anthropology. Her main research interests lie in the intersections of gender, age, and technology. Recently, Suopajärvi has researched experiences of ageing in the smart city of Oulu in northern Finland. Her previous studies include, for example, gender, expertise and human-nature relations of Finnish forestry professionals; the design of a smart city; and seniors’ ICT practices. Theoretically Suopajärvi is inspired by feminist new materialism, mainly the human–non-human entanglements and power relations in our everyday lives.

Minna Leinonen, PhD, is a post-doctoral research in the project. Her major is social psychology but she combines it with working life studies and feminist/ gender research. Communicative action research is her specialty in research methodologies and she is continuously interested in boundaries and tools to cross them in research and development processes. She has worked on issues of intersectionality, gender and power. These themes have been important in her recent work on gender and the military and in her PhD on promoting gender equality at workplaces with action research. She has also worked on knowledge sharing and commtiment in knowledge-intensive companies. Leinonen is inspired by research on interaction, the articulation of experience and knowledge relationships in face-to-face situations between researchers and other participants.