Elina Hakoniemi

Navigation into the future requires knowledge about the past – this is Elina’s guiding principle. She’s an expert in societal and political history, especially when it comes to welfare state, education, democracy or political language. Elina’s work focuses on recent history, and she looks at the society and governance via the lens of time and temporalities. She does not think the current state of affairs is the only option: in-depth knowledge about how we got here, what changed along the way and why, helps us to imagine new possible futures.

Previously she´s worked as a researcher in political history at the University of Helsinki. She’s finalizing her doctoral dissertation on the labor movement’s educational progress narratives on democracy and citizenship as a part of the Finnish welfare state development. In addition to research, teaching is Elina’s passion. She’s taught in the Bachelor Program “Change & Society” at Uni Helsinki. She and her colleague even received a faculty honorable mention for their course “Modern state and the civil society” in 2023. Elina has also participated in various voluntary and scientific associations working with empowering the civil society, re-enforcing democracy and strengthening the role of academic knowledge in the society.

At Demos, Elina works as a researcher in WELGO.

Outside work you can find her exploring museums. She finds especially home museums fascinating.