Members

Satu Miettinen
Doctor of Arts
Chair of the research group, Professor of Service Design, Dean
satu.miettinen@ulapland.fi
+358 40 4844367
Miettinen´s research profile

Satu is a professor and dean at the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland. She is chairing and working as PI for the Service Design Research Group. She is working as PI in various H2020 Transformations funded research projects and leading T-AP funded research project for the Finnish Academy. She has published widely around service design and artistic research. She is also a practising artist.
Satu's Blog

Enni Mikkonen
Doctor of Social Science
Post-Doctoral Researcher
enni.mikkonen@ulapland.fi
+358 404844214
Mikkonen´s research profile

Enni is a post-doctoral researcher in social work. She has previously worked as a researcher and a project manager in ‘SEEYouth: Social Innovation through Participatory Art and Design with Youth at the Margins: Solutions for Engaging and Empowering Youth with Trans-Atlantic Mirroring’ -project. Her research interests are art-based methods in social work, decolonising and feminist social work, migration and social integration, critical whiteness studies and study on racialisation.

Melanie Sarantou
Doctor of Visual Arts, Master of Business Administration, Master of Technology
Adjunct Professor, Social Design
melanie.sarantou@ulapland.fi

Sarantou´s research profile

Melanie is a Senior Researcher in the Finnish Academy funded Arctic Art and Design Profiling Area (2018-2020) and the H2020 European Commission-funded research project AMASS - Acting on the Margins: Arts as a Social Sculpture (2020-2023). Her arts-based research focuses on the themes marginality, narrativity, embodiment, improvisation and socially engaged arts.

Tiina Seppälä
Doctor of Social Science
University Researcher
tiina.seppala@ulapland.fi
+358 407262687
Seppälä´s research profile

Tiina works currently as a university researcher in the Academy of Finland funded ‘Rethinking Nordic Democracy: Civil Disobedience in Exceptional Times’ project. Her research interests include forced migration, displacement, development, postcolonial and feminist theory, activism, social movements, collaborative and arts-based research methods in collective knowledge production.

Piia Rytilahti
Doctor of Arts
Coordinator (Research activities), Researcher
piia.rytilahti@ulapland.fi
+358404844406
Rytilahti´s research profile

Piia defended her Ph.D thesis, “Pohjoisen muotoilun teoria. Kestävän muotoilun kuluttamisen perusteista” (in English: Northern design theory. Criteria for consuming sustainable design) at the University of Lapland, Faculty of art and Design October 2020. Her research interests are in design research, qualitative research methodologies, design philosophy, social practices, embodiment and interaction.

Essi Kuure
Doctor of Arts (Culture-Based Service Design)
University Lecturer, Researcher, Project Manager
essi.kuure@ulapland.fi
+358 40 484 4407
Kuure´s research profile

Essi works as a University Lecturer in the Industrial Design Department of the Faculty of Art and Design. She defended her PhD thesis “Service Design Workshops in Design Practice” in November 2020. Essi teaches, practices and researches service design with students, communities and organisations in Finland and abroad through different educational programs and projects. Currently she also manages Arcta Fast project.

Mariluz Soto Hormazábal
Doctor of Arts
Senior Researcher
msoto@ulapland.fi
Soto´s research profile

Mariluz is a service design researcher. She is the principal researcher in a Chilean – Finnish project to identify the opportunities to implement a service prototyping laboratory in Chile, from the experience in SINCO funded by the Chilean Ministry of Culture, Arts and Heritage. Her research interests are emotions, well-being, communities and people experiences, art-based methods, participatory design and social design.

Mira Alhonsuo
Doctor of Arts
Postdoctoral Researcher
mira.alhonsuo@ulapland.fi
+358 404844378

Alhonsuo´s research profile

Mira works as a postdoctoral researcher in SmartCulTour – Smart Cultural Tourism as a Driver of Sustainable Development of European Regions – project (2020-2023). She has been working for multiple service design projects in healthcare services, digital services, and tourism as well as with different companies and organisations. She defended her PhD thesis “Early Phase of Healthcare-Related Service Design” in December 2021.

 

Tarja Pääkkönen
Doctor of Arts
tapaakko@ulapland.fi
University of Lapland, Faculty of Art and Design

Tarja Pääkkönen, Doctor of Arts and M.Sc. (econ), takes a multidisciplinary approach by combining design perspectives with areas of management and organization studies. Her recent research interests include paradigms and philosophy, language and meaning, designer identity, professionalism, reflexivity and sensemaking. She has two decades of experience in higher education across business and design fields.

 

Kiwoong Nam
Doctor of Design
Project manager/Researcher
ki.nam@ulapland.fi

Kiwoong is a service design researcher working as a project manager at the University of Lapland. He has worked at international companies in different sectors as a quality engineer, R&D engineer, and marketer. He has researched design value and its measurement for the strategic use of design in the service industry with qualitative and quantitative approaches. His research interests include Service design for social innovation, Empathetic design, and Design value.

Katri Konttinen
Master of Arts
Project Manager /-coordinator 
katri.konttinen@ulapland.fi
+358 503710647
Konttinen´s research profile

Katri is a doctoral candidate at the University of Lapland. Katri has graduated as industrial designer and master of arts in applied visual arts. She has worked in art-based projects in Finland and abroad. At the moment she works as a project manager/-coordinator in the Arctic Smart Future Technologies project.

Maija Rautiainen 
Master of Arts
Project Manager
maija.rautiainen@ulapland.fi
+358 40 485 0489

 

 

Maija is a project manager in “Service Design Master’s Degree Programme” project (2019-2022). She has worked in multiple service design projects from story based service design in tourism context to social design in Africa context.

Krista Korpikoski
Master of Arts & Design
PhD Researcher, Project Manager
krista.korpikoski@ulapland.fi
+358 40 4844 366
Korpikoski´s research profile

Krista is a doctoral researcher at the University of Lapland. She also works as a project manager in LEADBEHA – Leadership as a trigger for behavioral change when creating AI cultures in companies and organisations – project (2019-2022). Krista has experience in multiple service and product design projects. In the field of service design her expertise is in strategic development projects within the context of a multinational corporation, small and medium-sized organizations and communities. Her PhD research focuses on service design and organization research. Krista investigates impacts of service design on organizations’ internal environments.

Ella Björn
Master of Social Sciences
Project Manager
ella.bjorn@ulapland.fi
+358 406598057

Björn´s research profile

Ella Björn works as a project manager in the Active Arctic -project (funded by the European Regional Development Fund) and as a project planner in the SmartCulTour – Smart Cultural Tourism as a Driver of Sustainable Development of European Regions -project (funded by H2020 European Commission). Her research interests are in community-based tourism, tourism research, service design and art-based methods.

 

Amna Qureshi
Master of Multimedia Arts
Researcher, AMASS Project
aqureshi@ulapland.fi
+358 40 563 7116

Qureshi´s research profile

Amna is a doctoral researcher in the Arctic in the Changing World program. In addition to her master's degree in Multimedia Arts, she has ten years of teaching experience in Visual Communication Design. Her research interests are artistic and art & design education experiments which will contribute to the H2020 funded research project Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture (AMASS) at the University of Lapland, Finland.

 

STEERING COMMITTEE

Dean, Professor Soili Haarala-Nystén, Faculty of Law
Dean, Professor Merja Laitinen, Faculty of Social Sciences
Professor Anu Valtonen, Faculty of Social Sciences
Vice-dean, Professor Jonna Häkkilä, Faculty of Art and Design
Vice-dean, Professor Heli Ruokamo, Faculty of Education
Director, Professor Antti Honkanen, Multidimensional Tourism Institute (MTI)
Chief Executive Producer Nicolas Gunslay, Arktikum Science Centre
Research Service Manager Satu Pesola, RDI Services
Dean, Professor Satu Miettinen, Faculty of Art and Design, Chair