Areas of expertise
Biography
I received my PhD from The London School of Economics in 1997. Since then, I have worked at University of Turku and Åbo Akademi. In 2012, I was appointed as a Professor of Political Science at University of Turku. Previously, I have made research visits at Columbia University, Australian National University and University of Westminster. I was the Principal Investigator of the project "Participation in Long-Term Decision-Making" (PALO) funded by the Strategic Research Council of Academy of Finland (2017-2022). Currently, I lead the project "Facing Systemic Change Together" (Homepage | Deliberating on Climate Actions | FACTOR (utu.fi) funded by the Research Council of Finland (2021-2024). I am also a WP leader in SCR-funded project Flaire (https://flaire.fi/) and the EU Horizon project Sincrony (https://sincronyproject.eu/).
Teaching
I teach courses on democratic theory, democratic innovations, and issues of long-term governance. I am also supervising Master's and PhD students in political science.
Research
In my research, I specialize in democratic theories, especially theories of deliberative democracy, political trust, as well as various types of democratic innovations such as citizens' initiatives and deliberative mini-publics. I am particularly interested in how democratic innovations can be connected with the existing policy-making practices and how they can influence policymaking and the wider public. In the ongoing research projects FACTOR, Flaire and Sincrony, I focus on the role of citizen deliberation in climate and energy transitions as well as on the issues of inclusion in deliberative forums.