Kaisa Hytönen received her PhD in Education from the University of Turku in 2016. She is a Senior Researcher at the entrepreneurship unit of the Turku School of Economics at the University of Turku. Previously she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the DISCE (Developing Inclusive and Sustainable Creative Economies) H2020-project and SWiPE-research consortium funded by SRC. She has worked as a project coordinator of Early Stage researcher project on HR of the University of Turku and as a researcher on several multidisciplinary research projects at the Faculty of Education of the University of Turku and University of Helsinki (Futurex – Future Experts, ASKO). Kaisa is a member of EARLI, the biggest educational association in Europe, and EARLI Sig14 Professional Learning and Development. Kaisa has participated in the organization of international and multi-professional WORK-conference as well as National Entrepreneurship Education Conference.

Kaisa’s research interests are related to the interfaces between education and working life, working life and entrepreneurship, professional education, networked expertise, social networks, professional learning and development. In her dissertation, she examined efforts to bridge academic and working life expertise in continuing professional education. Kaisa's current research is specifically related to working life, competencies and entrepreneurship in the cultural and creative sectors. Kaisa publishes in scientific journals and regularly presents her research at international and national conferences. She also serves as a reviewer in scientific journals and conferences. She is an editor of Journal of Professional and Vocational Education.

Kaisa completed Pedagogical Studies on Adult Education in University of Helsinki. She has worked as a teacher on Introduction to Business: Futures thinking and project work-course from 2020 as well as on Workshop on research methods. She has acted as master thesis supervisor and supervised bachelor and master thesis students and doctoral candidates in methodological issues (social network analysis and qualitative content analysis).