My name is Johanna Hiitola and I work as a Senior Researcher at the Migration Institute of Finland. I got my PhD in Gender Studies from the University of Tampere in 2015. Since then I have worked as a lecturer at the University of Jyväskylä, Kokkola University Consortium Chydenius (2014–2018).
My current research deals with refugees’ family separation and Finnish family reunification policies. My other interests and previous research includes Afghan mobilities and diaspora communities, rural migration, welfare services for migrant parents, intimate partner violence, and gender, class and ethnicity in child protective service practices.
This is my first year in the ETMU board and I will be mostly contributing to the social outreach activities. In my free time, I’m involved in migrant and feminist activism. Since I get excited easily, I often find myself in engaged in several projects and endeavorsat once. To balance this (sometimes exhausting) tendency, I value quiet time alone.