Rate My Professor Suvi Keskinen

Suvi Keskinen is Professor of Ethnic Relations in the Swedish School of Social Science at the University of Helsinki, a position she has held since 2017. She leads the Centre for Research on Ethnic Relations and Nationalism (CEREN). Keskinen earned her PhD in Social Sciences from the University of Tampere in 2005 with a dissertation on family professionals and contradictions in violence work, focusing on gender, power, and linguistic practices. She obtained her Master's degree in Social Sciences from the University of Turku in 1995. She holds docent positions in Sociology at the University of Turku since 2011 and in Women’s Studies at the University of Tampere since 2009. Her career includes Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Turku (2012–2017), Postdoctoral Researcher at the Turku Institute of Advanced Studies (2009–2012), Acting Assistant Professor of Women’s Studies at the University of Tampere (2006, 2008–2009), and Senior Research Fellow at the University of Tampere Collegium for Advanced Studies (2007–2008). She has supervised doctoral programmes in Political, Societal and Regional Change, Gender, Culture, and Society, and Social Sciences.

Keskinen's research specializations encompass post/decolonial feminism, critical race and whiteness studies, politics of belonging, political activism, welfare state transformations, intersections of nationalism, racism, and class, mediatized politics of migration, ethnic and racial profiling, right-wing populism, and social movements. She has served as principal investigator on Academy of Finland projects such as 'Postethnic Activism in the Neoliberal Era: Translocal Studies on Political Subjectivities, Alliance-Building and Social Imaginaries' (2014–2019), 'Intersectional Border Struggles and Disobedient Knowledge in Activism' (2018–2022), and Kone Foundation's 'The Stopped – Spaces, Meanings and Practices of Ethnic Profiling' (2015–2018). She received the ETMU academic award in 2023 and has been involved in EU COST Action and Nordic research networks. Her major publications include books such as 'Complying With Colonialism: Gender, Race and Ethnicity in the Nordic Region' (2009, co-edited), 'Undoing Homogeneity in the Nordic Region: Migration, Difference, and the Politics of Solidarity' (2019, co-edited), 'Mobilising the Racialised ‘Others’: Postethnic Activism, Neoliberalisation and Racial Politics' (2022), 'Race, Bordering and Disobedient Knowledge: Activism and Everyday Struggles in Europe' (2024, co-edited), and 'The Routledge International Handbook of New Critical Race and Whiteness Studies' (2023, co-edited). Key articles address institutional racism in policing (2025), welfare chauvinism (2016), and neonationalist femininities (2018). She serves on the editorial boards of Current Sociology and Tidskrift för Genusvetenskap, and has organized events on antiracism, Palestine solidarity, and academic politics.