Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Norway

Assist. Professor, Prorector, Samuel Valkeapää works as Assistant professor in Duodji and design and Prorector at the as Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Guovdageaidnu, Norway. Working in Birgejupmi Horizon project 2025-2027.

Associate Professor Hanna-Maret Outakoski is Professor in North Sámi language and Sámi language didactics at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences in Kautokeino, Norway. Her research interests focus on teaching and learning of heritage language in varied contexts. One of the aims of the current collaborative research is to strengthen the position of Sámi writing and reading among Sámi youth. Other research interests focus on Sámi linguistics, as well as on the possibilities and potential of using virtual worlds and virtual classrooms for language revitalization and promotion of sustainable development of Indigenous communities.

Professor Gunvor Guttorm

Associate Professor Maarit Magga

Doctoral Researcher Inga Påve Idivuoma

Aalto University, Finland

Assistant Professor Julia Valle Noronha (PI) is a designer-researcher-educator, Assistant Professor in Fashion Design at Aalto University. Her research interest explores fashion’s potential for driving positive change especially from the perspectives of fashion design and wearing practices, as well as education. Julia approach the field from an outlook that praises diversity and holds being with the earth at its core.

Associate Professor Andrea Botero Cabrera work engages with the possibilities and contradictions of participating in design and designing participation today. She is interested in what counts as design, what other practices for world-making are there, and which ones we need to call into being. Her research aims to understand how collectives (broadly speaking) come to understand the design spaces available to them and how designers could infrastructure those spaces better, especially looking to support livable futures.

Doctoral Researcher Nathaly Pinto is an Ecuadorian design researcher at the Department of Design at Aalto University (FI) and an adjunct professor at Pontificia Universidad Católica del Ecuador (EC). Her work engages with participatory design, intercultural communication, and design for social change. She collaborates with Indigenous organizations and youth in the Ecuadorian Amazon, conducting research and co-designing visual devices that support dialogue, deliberation, learning, and political action.

Dr. Maarit Mäkelä is a Full Professor of Practice-led Design Research at Aalto University. She uses her own ceramics making as an embodied practice to (re)consider the entangled relationship between human and non-human realms in the context of soil. Her current research interest lies in craft making and its capacity to realise the caring acts we need to take and maintain towards the non-human world.

Postdoctoral Researcher Priska Falin is a researcher focusing on the close material-relationships in creative studio practices. The sensitive, feeling body is at the center of creative work, and in her research, Falin aims to understand the aesthetics of the creative experiences. The close relationship with the material also appears to Falin as an essential part of our developing relationship with the environment and the life-sustaining world. Falin is currently working as a postdoctoral researcher at Aalto University. Among other things, her duties include coordinating the AREA doctoral School, administrave work for the Aalto Research Catalogue portal, teaching and supervising in the Design major Contemporary Design. Falin is also on the editorial board of Journal RUUKKU – Studies in Artistic Research.

Doctoral Researcher Ivan Txaparro is an artist, musician, designer, and researcher committed to fostering participatory art, political activism, electroacoustic music, and storytelling, Ivan is a doctoral researcher in the Department of Art and Media at Aalto University and serves as the creative director of Resonar Lab—an international collective of artists, designers, and activists dedicated to promoting ecosocial transformations.

Umeå University, Sweden

Professor Cindy Kohtala, is Professor in Design for Sustainability and programme director of the MFA Interaction Design programme. Kohtala’s research examines how active citizens experiment with sustainability hands-on and materially, through, for example, hacking and making in fab labs, makerspaces, and grassroots activist projects.

Doctoral Researcher Sergio Bravo-Josephson

Associate Professor Kristina Sehlin MacNeil, Dr Kristina Sehlin MacNeil is Associate Professor of Sámi Studies and Deputy Director for Várdduo – Centre for Sámi Research where she is also a researcher. Her research focuses on conflict and power relations between Indigenous communities and extractive industries and international comparisons of these; violence that impacts Indigenous people; and Indigenous methodologies and ethics.

Associate Professor/Director at Várdduo Christina Storm Mienna, Associate professor. Board member of the Research committee at Sámi Norwegian National Advisory Unit on Mental Health and Substance Use, board member of the Research ethical committee at Sámi University of Applied studies, representative in the Arctic Council’s Arctic Human Health Expert Group, representative in IASC Standing Committee on Indigenous Involvement Swedish Research.

Aalborg University, Denmark

Associate Professor Kasper Rodil, main research is focused on inclusive and forward-thinking co-design of systems development with indigenous people, primarily in Sub-Saharan Africa. With over 70 publications on the technology-crossover of indigenous emancipatory collaboration and technology innovation, lately covering topics such as dark sky tourism, female VR games, and indigenous chemistry – he puts people and their culture at the frontstage of tech.

Assistant Professor Petko Karadechev, the red thread throughout his research concerns the involvement of socially vulnerable populations in technology design, questioning how knowledge is constructed, shared, and perceived. A key issue Petko focuses on is the process of power hand-off in research practices, where institutions reverse course on pseudo-participatory practices, initiatives and mindsets regarding indigenous peoples.