After graduating with the degree of MSc in social policy from the London School of Economics in 2003 I begun my career as Research Assistant at the University of Kent in an EU funded project directed by professor Peter Taylor-Gooby. After that in 2005 I started working on my PhD about historical and contemporary changes in Nordic social policy at the Centre for Nordic Studies at the University of Helsinki. My work was supervised by Director Henrik Stenius and by doctor Keijo Rahkonen and professor Pauli Kettunen, who directed a Nordic research network in which I participated. 

I visited the London School of Economics in 2006-07 as a visiting research student and pursued by research under the supervision of professor Hartley Dean and professor Julian LeGrand. I was awarded my PhD in 2011 after which I taught and continued my research at the Swedish School of Social Science, University of Helsinki until 2021. Since 2022 I have worked at the Department of Social Research at the University of Turku. 

In addition to my academic roles I have been active in civil society. As a member of the Healthy Money group I have promoted economic justice. I have acted as chair of the board for Fair Tax Finland, a member of the international movement for tax justice and economic transparency. I have also been active in politics, having stood as candidate in parliamentary elections in 2015 and municipal elections in 2017 in Helsinki. 

In my spare time I like playing golf and badminton, acting and singing. 

I do research on social policy and my expertise concerns the relationship between social policy and the economy. My previous research dealt with historical and contemporary changes in Nordic social policy especially from the point of view of work and income. Questions concerning individual and collective agency have also interested me. 

More recently, I have focused on the concept of social policy and the purpose of social policy in modern society. I have associated a creative social policy with an emancipatory development of society and culture. Such a social policy is socially and ecologically sustainable. 

Furthermore, I am the founder of the Network of Creative Social Policy. This network consists of researchers and civil society activists and entrepreneours who work with human creativity and who promote a vision of social change. Through a co-creative method, this network recognizes initiatives and practices that help societies to develop in a socially and ecologically sustainable way in times when our future images are dominated by disasters and crises. 

I teach in the degree programmes BA Social Science and MA Social Policy. The Germban Bildung ideal and the strenghtening of students' moral agency are important normative starting points in my teaching. 

I am responsible for the courses Social Research and Scientific Thinking and Academic Thesis Writing. I am also responsible for BA thesis seminars. In the MA Social Policy programme I am responsible for the courses Classics in Social Policy and Ecosocial Welfare State. In addition, I supervise PhD projects related to my own research interests. 

I am the founder of the University of Turku Seminar on Political Economy.