Hello there! Welcome! I’m thrilled to have you here.
My family calls me Masha, but I’m also known as Dr. Saari. My heart lies in environmental education and multispecies justice, and my interdisciplinary research focuses multispecies justice-oriented pedagogies, policy, critical animal studies, curriculum development, teacher education and building partnerships.
I’m a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oulu, where I’m involved in exciting work as part of the MUST: Enabling Multispecies Transitions research project (funded by the Strategic Research Council, 2023-26). As a Co-lead of WP2: Unlearning with Other Species, I work on understanding how to create just multispecies transitions in education across policy, pedagogy and practice. I also co-coordinate and teach courses on environmental education and multispecies childhood studies and supervise masters and doctoral theses on these themes.
In 2021, I completed my PhD in Educational Sciences at the University of Oulu, and I was honoured to receive the Senior Animal Research Award from ICALP - The International Centre for Animal Law and Policy in 2022 for my dissertation, Animals as Stakeholders in Education: Towards an Educational Reform for Interspecies Sustainability. Over the years, I’ve been fortunate to be invited to give presentations at a wide range of events, from international conferences to specialized seminars, where I’ve had the opportunity to share my research and exchange ideas with passionate scholars and practitioners from all corners of the world. My work has taken me to diverse countries, including Namibia, Australia, Canada, United States, Sweden, UK, Denmark, Portugal and France.
With a rich background in education leadership, I’ve been involved in diverse initiatives that bridge theory and practice, including serving as Co-lead of the Envisioning Sustainability Hub within the Biodiverse Anthropocenes Research Program and Co-lead of the Environmental Education Working Group in an innovative partnership between the University of Oulu and the University of Namibia. Before my research career, I studied translation and interpreting and worked in teaching and leadership roles in the education sector. As a third-culture kid who’s lived in Finland, Australia, Russia, England, Spain, and Portugal, I feel most at home in international settings.
I split my time between Finland and Portugal, where I live at the foothills of the Arrábida Natural Park. When I’m not busy with research and teaching, you can find me outdoors marvelling at the bustling ecosystems of Arrábida in awe of the trees, flowers, bats, frogs, birds, butterflies and other earthlings I am incredibly lucky to share my neighbourhood with.
