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5.12.2022
Six new professors inaugurated at Åbo Akademi University this year
After the corona pandemic repeatedly put the brakes on the process, it’s once again possible to arrange professorial inaugurations. This year, six professors have been installed in office at Åbo Akademi, and a few more professorial inaugurations are planned for spring 2023.
The inauguration of professors is a festive academic ceremony where newly appointed professors are installed in office by the Rector. At the same event, the new professors give their inaugural lectures, which are open to the public.
At the professorial inauguration in Academill in Vaasa on 30 September 2022, Siv Björklund, Professor of Swedish Immersion and Multilingualism and Mia Heikkilä, Professor of Early Childhood Education and Kim Strandberg, Professor of Political Science, especially Political Communication, were inaugurated.
At the professorial inauguration in the Old Academy Building in Turku on 2 December 2022, Martina Björklund, Professor of Russian Language, Leena Hupa, Professor of Inorganic Chemistry and Lena Marander-Eklund, Professor of Nordic Folkloristics were inaugurated.
Much of Mia Heikkilä’s research focuses on equality in early childhood education, and in particular equality between girls and boys.Siv Björklund’s research interests include multilingual pedagogy, language awareness and language integration.Kim Strandberg’s research concerns political behaviour on social media and democracy research with a special focus on deliberative democracy.Lena Marander-Eklund’s research focuses on emotions and emotional expressions, female life in 1950s Finland, Swedish culture in Finland in the 20th century, and the human relationship to illness and medicines, among other topics. Her professorship is the only one of its kind in Finland and the Nordic countries.Martina Björklund’s research focuses on new and creative language use in both fiction and non-fiction texts, such as youth language and Soviet slogans.Leena Hupa’s research has mainly focused on relationships between the chemical composition and the chemical and physical properties of ceramics and glass, including bioceramics. Her research has later been extended to the high-temperature use of biomass-based fuels and to the use of side streams and wastes from industrial processes from a circular economy point of view.
