Sirke Mäkinen

• Docent; Doctor of Social Sciences
• University lecturer in Russian and Eurasian Studies at University of Helsinki

Denne artikkelen drøfter Finlands forskningssamarbeid med to autoritære stater, Kina og Russland, som begge har vært viktige partnere for finske forskningsinstitusjoner siden år 2000. I den siste tiden har det imidlertid vært økende uro rundt forverring av forhold rundt akademisk frihet i Kina og Russland og de mulige sikkerhetsrisikoene et samarbe...

This forum is a contribution to debates over the (im)possibility of cooperating with the Russian academic community while Russia’s war against Ukraine continues. After briefly reviewing previous studies on the effectiveness and morality of academic sanctions, the forum continues to assess the politics and effectiveness of the academic boycott in ch...

This paper discusses Finnish-Russian relations from the perspective of cooperation in higher education, and particularly Finnish-Russian double degree programmes prior to 2022. It asks how internal stakeholders, in double degree programmes perceived the role of their cooperation from the point of view of interstate relations, and how cooperation ha...

Book Description This book focusses on Russia’s cultural statecraft in dealing with a number of institutional cultural domains such as education, museums and monuments, high arts and sport. It analyses to what extent Russia’s cultural activities abroad have been used for foreign policy purposes, and perceived as having a political dimension. Build...

Russian state authorities have emphasised the importance of promoting Russian higher education abroad, recruiting international students and taking part in the global education market. So far, the rationale for these actions has been political instead of economic. This chapter argues that the political rationale is closely linked with the language...

Russia increasingly emphasises the importance of ‘soft power’ for securing its foreign policy interests. Recent research has paid more attention to Russia’s intentions rather than to the receiving end of its cultural and public diplomacy. This volume addresses this gap and explores the specifics of both Russian language promotion and its acceptance...

Why have regimes and societies that would otherwise argue for their distinctiveness and sovereign decision-making caught ‘ranking fever’ in HE? Why are they willing to give up their sovereignty in the field of HE, and why do they accept the requirement of homogeneity to succeed in global university rankings? This paradox is explored in the case of...

Published in EDUneighbours Blog: https://research.tuni.fi/eduneighbours/eduneighbours-found-changes-in-double-degree-activities-follow-up-survey-2020/ More double degree programmes in 2020 than 2017, but not all the old ones survived. However, the Covid-19 pandemic has not terminated double degree cooperation. Background In spring 2020 the EDUne...

This article addresses the question of how the Crimean case relates to Russia’s general understanding of territorial questions and border regimes. We examine the historical evolution of Russian discourse on borders and territorial questions and investigate to what extent they can explain Russia’s decision to annex Crimea. We will look into the prin...

The article analyses how Russian and European scholars have studied EU-Russia cooperation in the field of higher education. Cooperation in this field occupies a small share of scholarship on EU-Russia cooperation but has been evaluated as ‘the least conflicting’ among all areas of cooperation and the least affected by crises in EU-Russia relations....

Geopolitics is a topic that again has taken the frontline in discussions of how to interpret Russia’s foreign policy or Russia’s relations with the West. Geopolitical thinking in Russia has often been identified with different schools of neo-Eurasianism, extreme versions of which contain expansionist, nationalist ideas. However, these schools do no...

This paper addresses official Russian discourse on educational diplomacy—that is, discourse that prioritizes the political rationale for internationalization of higher education. When Russia promotes its higher education abroad and recruits international students to Russian universities on the territory of the Russian Federation (RF) or abroad, it...

This essay examines Russian argumentation on its visa-free regime with the EU within the context of discussions about modernisation. It examines arguments within the Russian foreign policy establishment about modernisation, Russia’s modernisation partnership with the EU and visa-free travel, and how these issues are linked. First, the essay outline...

This article explores the construction of Russia's role in the post-Soviet space on the popular level of geopolitical culture. This empirical study is based on an interpretative analysis of open-ended survey responses of International Relations and Political Science students in Russian universities. The purpose of the article is twofold: first, to...

This special issue gathers scholars from diverse fields to investigate the idea and practice of space in the processes of Russian modernization. The analyses focus on post-Soviet Russia and reflect on its political, social and cultural transformations by discussing the following topics: digital geopolitics and the annexation of Crimea, mega-events...

What worldviews are passed on to students in Russian universities? This question can be approached by studying teaching in a discipline known as Geopolitics, which is offered as part of many degree programmes in Russian universities. The article makes use of observations of geopolitics lectures and geopolitics textbooks to study worldviews, underst...

Vladislav Surkov, the first deputy head of the Russian presidential administration and one of the key ideologists during Putin's presidency, offers an interesting insight into the Russian political elite and their narratives on Russia's past, present and future. The ultimate goal in the Surkovian narrative is to make Russia a leader in the world an...

Russo-Chechen relations are taken here as an example of Russia's geopolitics, and what is said/written about them as an example of Russian geopolitical argumentation. Despite the numerous studies on Russian geopolitical thinking and the argumentation on Russo-Chechen relations, I argue that the study of Russian politicians and especially political...

This article draws attention to the competitive and changing nature of the discursive field of Russian geopolitics. In particular, the article focuses on the geopolitical discourses of the Yabloko Association (from 2001 the Democratic Party of Russia, Yabloko). In the discursive study of geopolitics, which is well developed in the critical geopolit...