Our editorial team consists of extensive expertise and knowledge within the field of political science and more largely in social sciences.
Please see also the letters from the editorial team regarding topical events, open vacancies, matters of the editorial team and previous media appearances.
Mikko Leino
EDITOR-IN-CHIEFMikko Leino is a senior researcher at the political science unit at University of Turku. He currently works in a research project funded by the Academy of Finland that examines a just energy transition and related citizen participation. Leino’s research focuses on democratic innovations, deliberative democracy and citizen opinions – especially attitudes regarding immigration and climate policy. He is also interested in e.g. questions related to citizen participation, political geography and political polarization.
Marianne Sandelin
EDITOR-IN-CHIEFMarianne Sandelin (M.A) works as a doctoral researcher in the Doctoral Programme of Political, Societal and Regional Change in the University of Helsinki, in the discipline of political history. In her dissertation, she explores the philosophical and intellectual historical roots of European conservatism by examining the political philosophy of Joseph de Maistre – in particular, Maistre’s critique of the Enlightenment’s political rationalism, idealism, and intellectualism as well as his complex relationship with universalism and pluralism. Sandelin’s research interests include for example the Enlightenment, the Counter-Enlightenment, liberalism, conservatism, universalism, and societal polarization.
Taneli Viitahuhta
EDITOR-IN-CHIEFMA, PhD researcher Taneli Viitahuhta is a writer and translator. Viitahuhta is currently completing his doctoral thesis for the Department of Political Science at the University of Jyväskylä on the relationship between Theodor Adorno’s critical social theory and the aesthetics of jazz. He has written on the politicised aesthetics of the Cold War and free jazz as a political form (Free Jazz Communism, Rab-Rab Press 2019), translated essays by Walter Benjamin (Keskuspuisto, Tutkijaliitto 2014) and Friedrich Pollock (Valtiokapitalismi, Tutkijaliitto 2023), as well as texts on music for the online magazine Komeetta. Viitahuhta is interested in the intersection of art and politics.
Hanne Vuorela
MANAGING EDITORManaging editor of Politiikasta is a professional responsible for daily publishing operations and delivery of editorial content in collaboration with editorial staff.
B.Soc.Sci, BA Hanne Vuorela studies journalism in Tampere University. She works also as audio journalist and podcast producer.
Board members
Joonas Aitonurmi
MSc Joonas Aitonurmi has studied political science in University of Helsinki. Currently he works as a specialist in public sector. Aitonurmi is pleased to embrace the task of popularizing science as a journalist. In his master thesis, he studied political representation of employer organisations and Finnish forest industry.
Emma Hakala
Emma Hakala, Doctor of Social Sciences, works as a researcher at BIOS Research Unit and is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. Her doctoral dissertation in political history examined the concept of environmental security and the role of international organisations in promoting it in the post-conflict Western Balkans. Hakala’s research interests include environmental and climate security as well as sustainable development.
Julian Honkasalo
PhD Julian Honkasalo works as an Academy of Finland researcher at the University of Helsinki in gender studies. Honkasalo got her PhD under gender studies from the University of Helsinki in 2016 and earned her second PhD in political sciences in the spring of 2018 from The New School for Social Research in New York. Her primary research interests lie in the historical structures of power related to race and gender, biopolitics, the political thought of Hannah Arendtin and non-violent resistance.
Joonas Huhtaniemi
Joonas Huhtaniemi is a financial journalist at Kauppalehti. In his work, he has actively followed, among other things, monetary and trade policy and China. In his master’s thesis, he studied the communication of the European Central Bank during the euro crisis. In his thesis, Huhtaniemi used Carl Schmitt’s theoretical toolkit, which he is interested in applying next to issues related to China.
Ari-Elmeri Hyvönen
DSocSci Ari-Elmeri Hyvönen is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Jyväskylä. His research interests include political theory, security, and the role of facts in politics. He has previously worked in the University of Tampere, in a research project focused on resilience, funded by the Finnish Government’s analysis, assessment and research activities. He has been a visiting fellow at the University of Verona and Bard College. His publications have addressed post-truth politics, the political thought of Hannah Arendt, and higher education policy, among other issues.
Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus
D.Soc.Sc Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus is a university lecturer at the University of Helsinki. Previously she worked as a postdoc researcher at the University of Jyväskylä, in the project called EUROHERIT. The project analysed how the European Union creates a European cultural heritage and how it is utilized in the construction of identities. In addition, Kaasik-Krogerus is interested in media, identities, the EU, Eastern Europe and Estonia.
Johannes Lehtinen
Johannes Lehtinen (MSSc) is a PhD Researcher at the Faculty of Management and Business in The University of Tampere. His PhD thesis focuses on citizen and civil society participation in EU policy making and democratic legitimacy of European integration. His other research interests include European integration dynamics, political participation and the economic-, climate- and asylum policies of the EU.
Mattias Lehtinen
Mattias Lehtinen (DSocSci) is a Postdoctoral Researcher in Practical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki specializing in political theory. Lehtinen’s doctoral dissertation was on the role of political imagination in democracies and he is now working on a research project dealing with the crisis of political reason. In addition to researching questions concerning political imagination and democracy, Lehtinen’s interests also involve the study of political polarization, antidemocratic political movements, populism, the politics of emotions, political culture and democratic self-defense.
Suvi Mutanen
MsocSc Suvi Mutanen is a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Management and Business at Tampere University. Her research focuses on animal politics in Finland, particularly examining the construction of politics. Mutanen’s research interests include political and institutional mechanisms that guide the formation of policy processes. She also explores their connections to broader societal structures and developments.
Laura Parkkinen
M.Soc.Sc, MA Laura Parkkinen is a free journalist and researcher, specializing in France and populism. Parkkinen worked as a university teacher at the Universite de Sorbonnessa in 2018-2020. Her dissertation deals with the language of populism.
Kersti Tainio
Kersti Tainio is an art historian and doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki (Doctoral programme in history and cultural heritage). She studies artworks and cultural objects that came to Finland as a consequence of Russian revolutions and ended up in museum collections. She is interested in how material objects convey political history and how art and memory politics are intertwined. Kersti is the curator of the Politiikasta taidetta series together with Taneli Viitahuhta.
Meeri Tiensuu
MSocSc, Meeri Tiensuu is a doctoral research at Tampere University in the field of peace and conflict research. In her PhD she studies the intersection of integration processes, co-existence and beloning through arts-based and co-creative methods. Tiensuu is also interested in the connections between participation, knowledge production and societal activism.
Timo Uotinen
Timo Uotinen (PhD MA FM) is a researcher in literature and philosophy who specializes in Shakespeare’s plays and their afterlife in our modern world. He also explores, through the philosophy of Francis Bacon, Shakespeare’s contemporary, how the mind influences individual and communal action and how art in its various forms helps to understand political and ethical action. Timo is also interested in how social media can act as a mediator of researched information.
