Kollektiivi

Animaten perustaja ja johtaja, kasvatustieteiden ja psykologian tiedekunnan yleisen kasvatuksen yksikön varajohtaja (Oulun yliopisto) sekä useiden laajojen tutkimushankkeiden vastuullinen johtaja. Hänen tutkimusintresseihinsä kuuluvat yhteiskuntatieteellinen biodiversiteettikasvatus monilajisten ja posthumanististen lähestymistapojen kautta, muiden eläinten roolit ja asema (tieteellisen) tiedon tuottamisessa, eläinestetiikan pohtiminen sekä osallistavan kansalaistieteen kehittäminen. Pauliina toimii vapaaehtoisena loukkaantuneiden lintujen kuntouttajana (Instagram: @pihalintu) ja jakaa arkensa undulaattien, kanojen, koirien ja hevosen kanssa.

Tuure on Animaten perustajajäsen ja sen nykyinen varajohtaja, Tampereen yliopiston dosentti ja yliopistotutkija Oulun yliopiston kasvatustieteiden ja psykologian tiedekunnassa. Hänen tutkimuksensa liittyy kasvatuksen ja lapsuuden uudelleentarkasteluun enemmän-kuin-inhimillisten teorioiden ja relationaalisten ontologioiden näkökulmasta. Viime aikoina hän on kirjoittanut ja ollut mukana kirjoittamassa monilajisesta lapsuudesta keskittyen muun muassa homeeseen ja mikrobeihin, hoivan monimutkaisuuksiin, kurittomuuteen ja väkivaltaan lapsi–eläin-suhteissa sekä modernin mielikuvituskriisiin vastaamisen mahdollisuuksiin. Tuure toimii myös Kasvatus ja Aika -lehden sekä Trace – Journal for Human-Animal Studies -lehden toimituskunnassa.

Vladimirova is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Oulu. She is an environmental education scholar whose work integrates relational ontologies, environmental ethnography, place-responsive pedagogy, and multispecies inquiry. She is leading one of the work packages in the HOMINGS: More than just human homes (RCF 2024-2028) project (PI Prof Pauliina Rautio). Together with photographer Inkeri Jäntti and sound artist Elle Kokkonen, Vladimirova visits abandoned houses with the aim to document the biodiversity of these houses, envision homes as more-than-human infrastructures and contribute to policy dialogues that recognize urban ecologies beyond human habitation. Vladimirova has been a member of the transdisciplinary research group AniMate since its establishment in 2016. Vladimirova co-hosts and co-produces mosscast: A multivoicED podcast that explores multispecies (justice) education, art, research and practice.

Vladimirova’s main areas of interests include place-responsive pedagogy, materialities of places, embodied ways of knowing, and the creative inquiries through which humans and more-than-humans co-create meaning in precarious environments. In 2025, she received a grant for the Place-Responsive Pedagogy: Education for Climate Resilience project, funded through the University of Oulu International Strategic Partnership Development Scheme. Through this project, she collaborated with Dr. Jamie Mcphie (University of Cumbria, UK) and supervised ten pre-service teachers working with methods that enhance attentiveness to inequalities, discriminatory practices, and anthropocentric patterns within the places they inhabit. The results of their shared work are available at the project’s website. 

Assistant Professor of Educational Research at Augusta University, USA. Brandon’s research is at the intersections of EcoJustice Education, Multispecies Justice, and Critical Podcast Research Methodologies. He is also one of the cohosts of the Animate affiliated podcast: MOSScast.

Doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Education and Psychology at the University of Oulu (Finland) and a plant listener cycling with the rhythms of tides. I am fascinated by encounters between humans and animated nonhumans. My PhD takes as point of departure indigenous thinking to explore and develop plant-human educational relations grounded in the animated and relational aspects of the world. My thesis builds on an original one-year multi-site participatory research with 30 adults and their plant-teachers. My interests include multispecies participatory methods, education as healing, and human relations with an animated wider-than-human world.  

Anna is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Biodiverse Anthropocenes research programme and the Faculty of Education and Psychology (University of Oulu). Anna’s research interests include more-than-human relations with resource extraction, post-industrial transformations, and digitalisation in the North. Since 2021, she has served as Secretary of the Social and Human Working Group at the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC). Anna is fascinated by Northern landscapes and loves exploring Arctic diversity.

Fariha is a Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Education & Psychology at the University of Oulu. Her research interests include posthumanist and critical approaches to environmental education, relational perspectives on childhood and multispecies coexistence, intercultural and decolonial pedagogies, and participatory research methodologies with children. She is particularly fascinated by how children from vastly different socio-ecological settings make sense of their relationships with more-than-human surroundings and companions, and what their stories reveal about coexistence and environmental justice. Her work centers children’s voices, especially those of marginalized and vulnerable children whose experiences often remain unheard. Besides research she loves exploring stories in all their forms. Folk tales, different oral traditions, children’s literature, graphic novels, podcasts, and the everyday narratives people weave about their worlds especially intrigue her.

Veera Kinnunen is a lecturer of Sociology at University of Lapland, and is currently affiliated with the University of Oulu’s transdisciplinary research program Biodiverse Anthropocenes (ANTS), and she is the Co-PI of More than just human homes (HOMINGS, RCF 2024-2028). In her academic work, Veera explores naturecultures of everyday life and dwelling, focusing on living-in-common with unwelcome beings such as clutter, waste, and microbes. She examines naturecultural infrastructures and metabolisms, and engages with more-than-human ethics of care. She develops an ethnographic imagination to inquire into more-than-human concerns. Starting from 2026, she is the editor-in-chief of Sosiologia-journal published by the Westermarck Society.

(photo credits: Birgitta Vinkka)

Maaria Hartman is a Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences at Tampere University and a Project Researcher at the Faculty of Education and Psychology at the University of Oulu. Maaria’s research interests include youth cultures, embodiment and embodied knowledge, youth and adult play and art in urban spaces, creative and art-based research methods, and researching animal and environmental relationships with young people. Maaria’s closest more-than-human teacher is a dog called Lila.

Kristiina is a doctoral researcher (Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Oulu) studying home education in Finland. Her research focuses on understanding the everyday lives and experiences of children in home education, while also taking into account the broader social, institutional and legal contexts in which home education takes shape, as children’s everyday lives unfold within these frameworks. By studying a marginal and alternative form of learning, she also examines the Finnish education system more broadly: its assumptions, boundaries and points of tension. Approaching a marginal practice offers a way to see how educational systems respond, adapt, or fail to engage with children’s everyday lives and needs.

Kristiina also approaches the topic from within the phenomenon. Her own experience as a home education parent offers insight into the complexity and tensions of the field, many of which remain poorly understood in research and public debate. She approaches the research as relational and negotiated. Sensitivity and trust are essential for this kind of work to be even possible.