Sophia Hagolani-Albov

I am PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies Doctoral Programme (DENVI) in affiliation with the Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry and Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS). In addition to my doctoral work I am the project coordinator for the Global Extractivisms and Alternatives Initiative (EXALT) at the Faculty of Social Sciences. I also co-host the EXALT Initiative podcast, a monthly conversation with academics, artists, and activists (www.exalt.fi). 

I have many research interests including:

• Food system redesign
• Agroecology
• Agroecological urbanism
• Sense of place
• Geographic imagination
• Sustainable transitions
• Transition narratives 
• Extractivim(s) 
• Data/Intellectual Extractivism

On the broadest level my work studies food systems. This discipline brings together ecological, social, cultural, political, and economic aspects. I specifically combine rural sociology and human geography methods to examine the socio-cultural aspects of food system redesign in the modern countryside. From rural sociology, I borrow ethnographic techniques to build an intimate understanding of the people involved in the food system. From human geography, I utilize spatial tools, like participatory mapping to understand individual’s conceptualizations of locality as it related to food. I marry these methods to understand the potential socio-cultural barriers to food system redesign in the Finnish countryside.

I have co-organized several doctoral level courses for the DENVI doctoral program at University of Helsinki, including: