Hello there! Welcome! I’m thrilled to have you here.
My family calls me Masha, but I’m also known as Dr. Maria Helena Saari. My heart lies in environmental education and understanding human-animal coexistence. My interdisciplinary research focuses on environmental and ecojustice education, conservation, animal law and policy, interspecies diplomacy and international relations, youth leadership, curriculum development, teacher education and building cross-sectoral international, regional and local partnerships to build communities of practice in and beyond education.
I am a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the University of Oulu in the MUST: Enabling Multispecies Transitions in Cities and Regions project (funded by the Strategic Research Council, 2023-26). As a Co-lead of WP2: Unlearning with Other Species, I work on 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.
I am also Co-lead of the International Strategic Partnership project between University of Oulu and University of Namibia on human-wildlife coexistence where we work directly with conservancy leaders, rangers, educators, and youth in the KAZA Transfrontier Conservation Area.
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 international and interdisciplinary background, I have 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 the Global Innovation Network in Teaching and Learning (GINTL) partnership between the University of Oulu and the University of Namibia. Before my research career, I studied translation and interpreting studies and worked in teaching and leadership roles in the education sector. Growing up as a third-culture kid moving across cultures, languages and countries became a way of life early on. I have lived in Australia, Finland, Russia, UK, Spain, and Portugal, and feel most at home in international settings. I am also a certified animal care attendant with a specialisation in animal shelters.
