Anu Kajamaa

Anu Kajamaa is a Professor of Education (Continuous Learning) at the Faculty of Education and Psychology, University of Oulu, Finland. She leads the Continuous learning research group at the Learning and learning processes research unit. She is also an Adjunct Professor (Learning and Organizational Change) at the Faculty of Education, University of Helsinki, Finland and Honorary Professor in the College of Social Sciences and International Studies, University of Exeter, UK.

Her current research focuses especially on continuous and collective learning, distributed creativity, collaboration, learning processes, organizational practices, management, and change and development via interprofessional working and formative interventions. She is an expert in sociocultural- and practice-based theories, qualitative research methods and participatory intervention techniques, drawing especially from sociocultural approaches, cultural historical activity theory and the Change Laboratory method. Her current research contexts are primary schools, teacher education, prisons, libraries, health care and social care, makerspaces, and entrepreneurship hubs/fabrication laboratories and other hybrid organizations. Her work is highly international, and she is a research group member in several national and international projects and consortiums, such as Erasmus+ and Horizon Europe projects.

She has published over 120 (blind reviewed) articles and book chapters, and has received several awards for her research and teaching, such as the Early Career Award given by the American Educational Research Association (AERA), and the Editor's Choice Award (the most impactful and high quality paper in 2020) award given by The British Educational Research Association (BERA) and the British Journal of Educational Technology (BJET). She has also received the Best Practice-Oriented Paper Award, from the Strategizing Activities and Practices interest group at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting (AOM), Chicago, US. Emerald and the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) gave her the Outstanding Doctoral Research Award. She was awarded the Adult Educator of the Year by students of general and adult education at the University of Helsinki, Finland.