At the centre of my dissertation is the phenomenon of school threats. In Finland, the control of and the knowledge production regarding this phenomenon have changed since the school shootings in Jokela, in 2007, and in Kauhajoki, in 2008. I use empirical data to illustrate problems in the knowledge production regarding school threats. I also reflect my own research process from this point of view. I draw from the philosophical debates on the objectivity of research and knowledge. I lean on critical criminology, specifically research which illustrates the link between defining and control, emphasizes the selectivity of control, and criticizes the data interests of mainstream criminology and the tendency to ignore analysis of power. I see school threats as an example of the intertwined nature of interference and non-interference to violence in society. I would like to draw attention to the “marked by risk” position of young people. I criticize threat analysis and suggest alternative ways of crime prevention, such as insights from critical pedagogical research.

In my teaching, I consider it essential to make the field of criminology understandable and approachable for those who first get to know it. In my lectures, I typically discuss what criminology is and what it could be. My expertise is related to critical criminology and concretizing it by examples from the Finnish context. My teaching draws from research related to my dissertation topic as well as from other current criminological research. For example, topics include police violence, victim blaming, methodological questions, and literacy in crime statistics and media.

In the Faculty of Law, I have participated in the course Sociology of Law and Criminology for several years and worked as a university teacher responsible for the course in the autumn of 2022 and 2023. In 2020, I taught a similar course at the Open university with my colleague. In the Faculty, I have also lectured on specialization courses and in advanced studies and supervised theses for Master’s degree. I have also given individual lectures on the basics of criminology, for example, in the Faculty of Social Sciences.