Tiina Seppälä

Tiina Seppälä holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Lapland. Her PhD thesis (2010) dealt with the anti-war movement and theories of global resistance. She is interested in activism, social movements, development, forced migration, displacement, post/decolonial studies, feminist theory, ethnography and engaged scholarship. Recently, she has focused on feminization of resistance, decolonial feminist solidarity, and arts-based research methods.

She has engaged with slum activists and women’s rights movements in Nepal and Bangladesh, anti-eviction movements in India, asylum seekers in Finland, and anti-war activists in the UK. She has been a visiting scholar in India (Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group, 2011–12), Nepal (Nepal Institute of Peace, 2012, 2014, 2020), Bangladesh (Refugee and Migratory Movements Research Unit based at the University of Dhaka, 2015), and Australia (University of Newcastle, 2019). Her research project Governance, Resistance and Neoliberal Development: Struggles against Development-Induced Displacement and Forced Evictions in South Asia was funded by the Academy of Finland (2013–16).

Currently, she works as a university lecturer in Political Science (temporary position) and researcher in Rethinking Nordic Democracy: Civil Disobedience in Exceptional Times research project, funded by the Academy of Finland. She is a member of the Service Design Research Group CO-STARS at the Faculty of Art and Design. She has the title of a docent (adjunct professor) of International Development Studies at the University of Jyväskylä.