Husu, Liisa, Professor

By Katherine Harrison on 19 Aug | 0 comments

Liisa Husu is Professor in Gender Studies at Örebro University.

She has a background in interdisciplinary academic research and both gender equality policy and science policy. Her mother discipline is sociology. She has been actively involved in developing and promoting gender research and women’s studies in Finland, Nordic countries and internationally over three decades, initially as the National Co-ordinator of Women’s Studies 1981-1996 and Senior Adviser in the Finnish governmental gender equality machinery.

Her research interests focus on gender in academia and scientific research, especially gendered processes and gender inequalities in academic and scientific organisations, higher education and research policy, and international comparative research. She has been engaged in several EU funded projects on gender, science and technology, and in inter- and transdisciplinary collaborations in gender studies with education, engineering, history, linguistics, management studies, media studies, medicine, philosophy, physics, political science, and social psychology. She is Member of the Board of the International Sociological Association Research Committee 32, Women in Society.

Her doctoral research explored gender dynamics in academic organisations through academic women’s experiences of discrimination, social support and survival strategies. This was followed by five years as postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies at the University of Helsinki. Recent research has focused on women’s careers and gendering of excellence in technological and engineering research in Europe, representations of women researchers in mainstream media, and gatekeeping of research funding. Other positions held include chairing the inaugural Board of NIKK (currently Nordic Gender Institute), and project leader of NASTA, the national multi-university Women’s Leadership Research, Education and Development project based at the Hanken School of Economics, Finland.

She has lectured in the Nordic countries, Europe, Australia, South Africa, and the South and North Americas, and has been engaged in several national, Nordic, European and international gender and science/research policy activities, including membership of the launching Board of the European Platform of Women Scientists EPWS, Moderator of the European Network on Gender Equality in Higher Education, and Rapporteur of the 2008-9 EC expert group on gender and excellence in research funding in 33 countries.