Anna Björk

Anna is a political scientist whose academic love affairs include research on political concepts, societal impacts of emerging technologies, and temporality. Her current research analyses societal transformations from the perspectives of EU digital policy, contemporary social contracts, and inclusivity. Alongside doing research, Anna is also working closely with her colleagues in developing and implementing the Demos Helsinki research agenda as well as our academic research operations. She completed her PhD in 2011 and holds Title of Docent in Political Science at the University of Jyväskylä.

Before joining us, Anna worked for several years in academia as well as in consultancy. After completing her PhD and postdoctoral projects based on the mix of citizenship studies, parliamentarism, and conceptual history, Anna has been happily applying research angles to policy-oriented research projects in collaboration with ministries and the parliament in Finland, on, e.g. algorithmic discrimination, mission-oriented policy, and gender equality.

Anna’s Demos Helsinki -based projects include, e.g., the European Commission-funded projects CO3 (Continuous Construction of Social Contracts through Societal Transformations), KT4D (Knowledge Technologies for Democracy) and CommuniCity. She has also worked on the previously published Avoiding AI biases, an assessment framework for non-discriminatory AI systems and The future of democracy and welfare in Europe: 4 scenarios for 2040.

Outside work, Anna spends quite a bit of time dreaming about skiing (downhill) and actually manages to also explore this dream every now and then. Meanwhile, the other half of her brain is preoccupied with random things having something to do with music.

Anna’s academic research: ORCID

Academic publications affiliated with Demos Helsinki:

– Erikson, J., Björk, A., Paavola, JM. (2024). Still Signs of Masculine Norms in the Parliamentary Workplace? Political Gender Equality in Finland and Sweden After a Century of Universal Suffrage. In: Erikson, J., Freidenvall, L. (eds) Suffrage and Its Legacy in the Nordics and Beyond. Gender and Politics. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.  https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-52359-5_9

– Björk, A. (2023). Facts, Narratives and Migration: Tackling Disinformation at the European and UN Level of Governance. In: Conrad, M., Hálfdanarson, G., Michailidou, A., Galpin, C., Pyrhönen, N. (eds) Europe in the Age of Post-Truth Politics. Palgrave Studies in European Political Sociology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-13694-8_9

– Björk, A. & Shaw, C. (2022): Extensions of citizenship? Exploring digital, global and environmental citizenship education. Postcolonial Directions in Education, vol 11, issue 1, p.140-177, ISSN 2304-5388.