Team

Field of expertise

Élise Féron is a Docent and a senior research fellow at the Tampere Peace Research Institute (Finland). She lectures for the MA in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research. Before moving to Finland, she held permanent positions at the University of Kent (UK) and at Sciences Po Lille (France).

She holds an Accreditation to Supervise Research (Docent) and a PhD in Political Science from the University of Lille (France, 2003 and 1999). 

She is an invited professor at the University of Louvain (Belgium), at the University of Turin (Italy), at the University of Coimbra (Portugal), at Sciences Po Lille (France) and at the Diplomatic School of Yerevan (Armenia). 

Élise Féron has chaired 7 major international projects over the past 15 years, funded by the EU (FP6, FP7, EuropeAid, Interreg IVC), the KONE Foundation and the Academy of Finland. 

Her main research interests include conflict-generated diaspora politics, conflict prevention, gender and peace negotiations, masculinities and conflicts, sexual violence in conflict settings, as well as post-colonial interstate relations. 

She has collected data in various so-called “conflict” or “post-conflict” areas, such as Eastern Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, Northern Ireland, Cyprus, the South Caucasus and the Balkans, among other places.

Research unit

Tampere Peace Research Institute – TAPRI

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8012-3937

Field of expertise

Bruno Lefort is a senior research fellow at the faculty of social sciences, Tampere University. He studied political sociology and anthropology of the Middle East at IREMAM in Aix-en-Provence and received his PhD in social sciences from the universities of Tampere and Aix-Marseille. His doctoral dissertation dealt with the dynamics of identification and belonging among student groups in Beirut, Lebanon. His current studies focus on the question of coexistence and belonging. Lefort is the leader of the research project Homeward: exploring co-creation practices towards integration, funded by the Kone Foundation (2022-2024). He is also an associate researcher at the Institut Français du Proche-Orient in Beirut, Lebanon. 

Research unit

Tampere Peace Research Institute – TAPRI

Field of expertise

Dr. Bahar Baser joined Durham University’s School of Government and International Affairs in 2021. Previously, she was Associate Professor at the Centre for Trust, Peace and Social Relations, Coventry University where she led the “Peacebuilding and Conflict Transformation Research Group”. Prior to that, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Warwick at the Department of Politics and International Studies between 2012 and 2014.

Dr. Baser completed a PhD in Social and Political Sciences at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. During her PhD, she had the opportunity to work as a Visiting Research Fellow at Humboldt University (Berlin Graduate School of Social Sciences) in Germany, REMESO (Institute for Research on Migration, Ethnicity and Society) in Norrkoping, Sweden and the Instituto de Ciencias Sociais (ICS) in Lisbon, Portugal. 

She is an expert in the area of diaspora studies, peacebuilding and conflict transformation, with a regional focus on the Middle East. She has conducted extensive research on diaspora engagement in peace processes, post-conflict reconstruction and state-building in the Global South. She has published extensively on stateless diaspora activism and mobilisation in Europe with a specific focus on host states’ counterterrorism policies, radicalization of diaspora members and transnationalization of homeland conflicts. 

Field of expertise

Octavius Pinkard is a PhD Researcher in International Relations, specializing in Conflict and Security. His work examines relations between diaspora communities emanating from states where the fault lines of conflict are defined largely by ethnic, religious or linguistic considerations. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork, his doctoral project at the University of Kent (Canterbury) focused on the conduits and inhibiting factors of conflict transportation among Lebanese communities in Dakar, Senegal and Dearborn, Michigan. He has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley (Center for African Studies) and a Visiting Researcher at Lebanese American University (Institute for Migration Studies). He also held a visiting doctoral research appointment at Tallinn University, funded jointly by the EU and Republic of Estonia. His experience further includes work for international organizations such as NATO and OSCE/ODIHR, with the latter consisting of both short-term and long-term assignments to missions in Central Asia, the Western Balkans, Eastern Europe and the Caucasus. He has extensive pedagogical experience, including a full-time appointment at the College of William & Mary, where he taught courses in International Relations and Comparative Politics.

Field of expertise

Sofiya Voytiv received her PhD in sociology from Stockholm University in 2020. Her dissertation investigates and theoretically conceptualizes the relationship between armed ethnicized conflicts in the “homeland” and diasporic communities elsewhere, focusing on the specific case of Ukrainian and Russian diasporic organizations and individuals in Sweden and Ukrainian-Russian conflict. In connection to her doctoral studies she was previously a visiting research fellow at Sociology Department at New York University.

Sofiya uses multiple methods for her research, including social network analysis and ethnography. Her current focus lies at the intersection of further development of theoretical conceptualization of the patterns of conflict deterritorialization and computational social science methods for text and speech analyses.

Personal website:

https://sofiyavoytiv.com/

ORCID ID:

https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6995-2817

Field of expertise

Vadim Romashov is a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere Peace Research Institute, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University. In his dissertation, Vadim focused on everyday practices and narratives of living together in Armenian-Azerbaijani rural communities in Georgia. His academic interests include co-existence and difference within small communities, international peace-building, ethnographic peace research, social in/visibility, minority-majority relations, solidarities and tensions among migrant groups on their varied paths of integration. He has taught courses on everyday peace, violence and conflict at Tampere University and University of Helsinki. Vadim has been involved in several international research-based conflict transformation initiatives in the South Caucasus and Moldova. He is an editor at Caucasus Edition: Journal of Conflict Transformation.

Field of expertise

Cæcilie is a PhD researcher at Tampere Peace Research Institute, Tampere University. With both a BA and an MA in Peace and Conflict Research, she has worked in particular with the possibilities and limitations for civil society organizations to contribute to peaceful change and conflict resolution. In her MA thesis, she explored online mobilization of Turkish and Kurdish diasporas in Denmark with a focus on conflict transportation. In her PhD studies, Cæcilie is researching intra-diaspora dynamics among Somali communities in Finland and Denmark. Her interests include the use of online ethnography for researching diasporic communities, everyday coexistence/conflict and feminist peace research.

Field of expertise

Anush Petrosyan is pursuing a master’s degree in Peace, Mediation and Conflict Research at Tampere Peace Research Institute (TAPRI), Tampere University in Finland. She is a Board Member at the European Peace Research Association (EuPRA). Her research interests are national identities, memory, reconciliation, and peace activism. She has previously trained youth on conflict resolution and peacebuilding, and co-facilitated dialogue sessions for young people coming from conflict-stricken backgrounds. She is a mentor for hundreds of participants on several non-formal education platforms.

Anush joined the DIASCON Project as a Research Assistant in January 2023.

Field of expertise

Karstein Volle (b. 1974) is a visual artist with a degree from the Oslo Academy of the Arts, living in Finland since 1999. His specialty is cartoons and illustrations spiced with social criticism and black humor. Volle has previously been published in small as well as national newspapers all over the nordics, not to forget  national broadcasters such as NRK and YLE. Volle has published a dozen books including Hand on my heart, Facts from the World, Karstein Vollen monta kuolemaa and most recently the autofictional graphic short story Livsgrisen. 

Volle is also a teacher of art, and in addition to the visual, he is also an active musician with about ten releases for various bands behind him. The latest ensemble, a tribute to the 1990s indie scene, is called Karstein Volle & The Telomeres.

Field of expertise

JP Ahonen is a Finnish comic book artist, illustrator, and the author of the graphic novel Sing No Evil (Perkeros) and several newspaper strips. His books have been published around the globe in over 13 languages, and he is best known for his black metal mockumentary Belzebubs, which has evolved from a self-therapy project into a larger cross-media concept, interweaving comics, music and animation. JP is currently developing Belzebubs into an animated series with Pyjama Films and YLE, Finland’s national broadcaster.

JP teaches comics and aims to use his sequential art super powers for good. In 2015 he organised a pop-up comic art store with other Finnish comic book artists and illustrators to aid the asylum seekers, donating all income to the Red Cross.

Field of expertise

Anna Quattrone is a diplomat at the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation.

With a MA in International Affairs, she specialised in Peace and conflict analysis and Human rights. Her research interests focused on conflict-generated diasporas, non-State armed actors and post-conflict stabilisation. Her main fields of research included Sri Lanka (civil war and transitional justice, diasporas and conflict transportation, women’s involvement and post-conflict challenges), Côte d’Ivoire (institutional mechanisms for post-conflict recovery) and Peru (non-State armed actors and terrorism).

Field of expertise

Mari Toivanen, PhD, is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki. She was an Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Turku between 2015-2018. She completed a post-doctoral researcher exchange at EHESS (School for Advanced Studies in Social Sciences) in Paris between 2015-2016, of which she became an honorary member. Her prior research focused on the second generation of Kurdish background in Finland, whereas her current research project deals with the political and civic participation of Kurdish diaspora communities towards the Kurdish regions in the Middle East. She has published in international journals on transnationalism, Kurdish diaspora, diaspora participation, identity. Her research interests cover also broader themes such as multiculturalism, nationalism and belonging. She holds a Ph.D degree in Social Sciences from the University of Turku.

Field of expertise

Zahra Edalati is a doctoral researcher at Tampere Peace Research Institute, Faculty of Social Sciences, Tampere University. With two MA degree in Peace and Conflict Research (from TAPRI), and communication study- journalism (from Iran). In her master thesis Zahra worked on women’s rights activism in Iran, everyday peace and peaceful transformation of Iranian society. In her PhD studies, she is researching transnational networks of solidarity among Iranian women in Iran and in the diaspora. Her interests include ethnography, everyday peace, feminist peace, intersectionality, identity politics and decolonizing perspective. She will teach a feminist peace course at Tampere University in spring semester, and she has organized reading circle named ‘Feminist peace from decolonizing perspective’ in TAPRI.

 

Research unit

Tampere Peace Research Institute – TAPRI

ORCID ID:

0000-0002-8812-1928