Professor Salmivalli has received a research grant from the European Research Council ERC. The ERC Advanced Grant is the largest personal research grant available in Europe.
The five-year ERC Advanced Grants are given to established, leading principal investigators who have a track-record of significant research achievements. The ERC Advanced Grants are one of the most competed funding in Europe.
The grant Professor Salmivalli received is approximately €2.5 million.
Salmivalli is behind the The KiVa Antibullying Program® developed at the University of Turku. Studies show that KiVa is one of the most effective antibullying programmes. The programme is used in over 900 schools in Finland and has also spread to many other countries. Now, Salmivalli wants to advance the research on bullying.
– So far, we have focused on the successful outcomes by studying how much bullying has reduced, and it really has reduced significantly. However, there are still children who are bullied, and those who continue bullying regardless of intervention. I now want to address these persistent cases and find out what we can learn from them, says Professor Salmivalli.
The funding granted to Salmivalli will enable research on e.g. longitudinal studies, experimental set-ups, and by utilising molecular genetics, on reasons why interventions do not always work and what factors explain persistent bullying cases. By studying these factors, new operational models can be created for intervention in different types of persistent bullying.
Salmivalli has been the Professor of Psychology at the University of Turku since 2004. Salmivalli is the First Vice Chair of the Strategic Research Council of the Academy of Finland and she has been granted the Science Award by the Ministry of Education and Culture in 2017.
