Astrid Huopalainen

Aalto University

astrid.huopalainen@aalto.fi

Astrid Huopalainen works as an Assistant Professor (tenure track) in ‘Leadership for Creativity’ at Aalto University (Finland), a position shared between the Department of Management Studies and the Department of Art and Media. Astrid serves as the Consortium PI of project PAWWS.

She is a qualitative researcher with expertise in posthumanist perspectives, human-animal relations, ‘more-than-human’ organizing as well as gender- and diversity-related inequalities in organizations. Her research agenda includes collectively establishing Animal Organization Studies as a legitimate field. Her previous research interests have included agents and topics largely considered marginal in organization theory, and in 2022, she was awarded the Chancellor’s Prize at Åbo Akademi University (Finland) for extending and renewing organization theory.

In project PAWWS, Astrid’s research contributes to Animal Organization Studies especially by drawing on insight from gender- and diversity theorizing, relational care literature, disability studies, and post-qualitative methodology. Empirically, she focuses on multispecies inclusivity and inequalities at work through multispecies ethnographic methods.Theoretically, she advances debates on interspecies care, multispecies well-being, and posthuman aesthetics.

Astrid has published her work, for example, in Human Relations, Journal of Business Ethics, Organization, and Gender, Work and Organization. Astrid’s family includes Saga and Selma, two fantastic Labrador retrievers who live life to the fullest.

Linda Tallberg

University of Lapland

linda.tallberg@ulapland.fi

Linda Tallberg is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lapland (Finland) whose research examines human–animal relations in business and society, with a focus on ethics, care, and justice. Her PhD, Processing Puppies: An Animal Shelter Ethnography (2014), was the first—and remains the only—doctoral study at her university involving human-animal work and animals in organizing and management.

Her work advances a multispecies agenda in business, management, and organization, and in 2022 she co-founded the field of Animal Organization Studies (AOS) through the edited volume The Oxford Handbook of Animal Organization Studies. She has also contributed to research on stakeholder theory, dirty work, human–animal work, ethics of care, Critical Management Studies, and business pedagogy often from feminist, posthuman, Critical Animal Studies (CAS) and post-anthropocentric perspectives.

In PAWWS, she focuses on ethical questions and serves as a Principal Investigator. She has published in Journal of Business Ethics, Work, Employment and Society, Journal of Organizational Ethnography, Organization, and Management Learning, and has held editorial roles at Society & Animals, TRACE: Journal for Human-Animal Studies and is guest-editor (with Astrid) of a special issue focusing on animals in Journal for Business Ethics.

She shares life with beloved rescue dogs: at the start of PAWWS with Beau, a Mastiff cross adopted from an Australian animal shelter, and towards the end of PAWWS with Rosy, a Rottweiler cross adopted from a Romanian animal shelter.

Anna Hielm-Björkman

Helsinki University

anna.hielm-bjorkman@helsinki.fi

Adjunct Professor and senior clinical teacher Anna Hielm-Björkman is an innovative and multidisciplinary researcher and has been PI of a dozen clinical projects at the department of Equine and Small Animal Medicine, University of Helsinki.

Dr Hielm-Björkman is a sought-after international speaker on chronic pain, adjunct therapies, dog health and nutrition, and scent detection dog topics. Dr. Hielm-Björkman has been an active member of the Finnish association of pain studies since 2000, she initiated the pain and rehabilitation clinic at the University animal hospital at UH in 2006, she initiated the scent detection dog research in 2014 and initiated the screening of COVID-19 at the Helsinki Airport in 2020, all important for the PAWWS study. She has attracted close to 2 million € in research funding for her projects.

She has her own research group called DogRisk at the University of Helsinki, with 8 researchers. Her main teachers of fairness, empathy, nutrition, and wonder are her two cross-bred dogs Lyra and Nala, and her parrot Aiko.

Suvi Satama

Aalto University

suvi.satama@aalto.fi

Suvi Satama worked as a Senior Researcher in project PAWWS (at the Department of Management Studies, Aalto University (Finland)) in 2024. Suvi is a leadership scholar with a background in management and organisation studies. Suvi works within organisational aesthetics and embodiment at work, and she draws strongly on approaches that integrate interdisciplinary and creative research. She is excited to research silenced or otherwise untouched research topics, like animals at work, entwined with the theoretical framework of embodiment at work.

She has published her work, for example, in Human Relations; Organization; Management Learning; Gender, Work and Organization; Leadership; and Organizational Aesthetics. Suvi has always had love for dogs, and she has kept Golden Retrievers for 20 years.

The PAWWS project has been a dream project for her, as it allows her to combine her expertise on organizational aesthetics and multispecies research to her intimate experience of living with dogs. She co-authors with team PAWWS.

Nona Borgström

Helsinki University

nona.borgstrom@helsinki.fi

Nona Borgström is a PhD student at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Dept. of Equine and Small Animal Medicine at the University of Helsinki. She is especially interested in multispecies and multiprofessional interactions in social- and healthcare settings, scent detection training, one welfare and ethics.

Nona is part of the DogRisk research group led by Anna Hielm-Björkman at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on medical alert dogs, for patients with different diagnoses of paroxysmal pain, especially Chronic Regional Pain Syndrome (CRPS), Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS), and migraine. This project is a multidisciplinary study in collaboration with Orton hospital and research (HUS), in Helsinki. The human-animal co-regulation and well-being in these interactions are also studied.

Nona is also developing the standards for medical scent dog working strategies for animal assisted interventions, fitting them into a university setting.

Tiamat Warda

University of Lapland

tiamat.warda@ulapland.fi

At the University of Lapland (Finland), Tiamat Warda works as a Postdoctoral Researcher in project PAWWS since April 2024. Previously, Tiamat completed her MA and PhD in Anthrozoology at the University of Exeter. Her focus rests at the intersection of Animal Organization Studies and emotion management to develop awareness of and establish sustainable emotional labour practices that bring together academic knowledge with practitioner expertise.

As a former practitioner, with over a decade professionally in the assistance dog sector, Tiamat has worked extensively both as a guide dog instructor, dog behaviour consultant, research consultant to develop a curriculum for assistance dog professionals as part of an Erasmus+ grant from the Federal Ministry for Education in

Germany, and an assistance dog team exam supervisor for the Assistance Dog Foundation (Stiftung Assistenzhund). One of her publications, which highlights the current realities and needs of assistance dog professionals with disabilities, was awarded the 4th Society & Animals Early Career Research Prize for 2022.

In project PAWWS, Tiamat continues to develop current understandings concerning how to establish roadmaps toward sustainable, regulated work for humans and dogs in Finland within the discipline of Animal Organization Studies. She currently lives with Inka, her humorous and caring dog companion.

Iida Hietala

Aalto University

iida.hietala@aalto.fi

Currently on leave. Iida Hietala joined project PAWWS as a Doctoral Researcher in 2024. With an academic background in Arts and Media from the School of Arts, Design and Architecture, and in Consumer Research from the School of Business, she brings an inventive multidisciplinary approach to the project.

Currently, she is finalizing her doctoral dissertation on consumer subjectivity in relation to visual arts and social media technologies. Through exploring topics ranging from creative production to multispecies experiencing and imaginative organizing, she strives to make the world a more harmonious place for all species. Additionally, she is enthusiastic about integrating novel methodologies into her research and enjoys netnographic explorations and creative expression. Iida has published her work in journals such as Marketing Theory and the Journal of Marketing Management.

Iida is impressed by her 11-year-old Boston Terrier, Böna, who leads her to the nearest bakery every Saturday morning to buy a fresh croissant.