Keynote speakers and panelists
Emeritus Professor Heidi Safia Mirza
Avauspuheenvuoro: “Why would I come to a place that hates me for what I am” Black and Muslim Women Decolonising Trust in New Global Times
“Why would I come to a place that hates me for what I am?” captures the lived reality of many Black and Muslim women navigating the intersectionality of racism, migration, mobility, and belonging in new global times. Their encounters with states, borders, and everyday institutional publics are shaped by racialised suspicion, Islamophobic surveillance, and gendered moral regulation. In such contexts, trust is not a neutral expectation but a colonial demand in which institutions insist on being trusted while offering little structural trustworthiness in return. Mistrust emerges from the opacity of migration systems, ‘safeguarding’ regimes, and counter‑terrorism policies that cast Black and Muslim women and girls as either risky or deficient. Distrust, however, is their rational, historically grounded response to the violence of imperialism, the legacies of enslavement, genocide and Islamophobia. Yet, as my research shows, Black and Muslim women ‘still rise’ to form and cultivate alternative infrastructures of trust and citizenship among themselves. Through their decolonial feminist world‑making – grounded in diasporic solidarities and communities of hope, love, and care – they imagine familial futures beyond the hate, hostility and violence that defines and fuels our racialised world order.
Biography: Heidi Safia Mirza is Emeritus Professor of Equality Studies in Education at UCL Institute of Education. She is internationally known for her pioneering intersectional research on Race, gender, and identity in education and championing equality and rights for Black, Asian and Muslim Women and young people through educational reform. A daughter of the Windrush generation from Trinidad, Heidi has been honoured as one of the first and rare 35 ‘Phenomenal Black Women Professors’ in Britain. She is author of several best-selling books including, Race Gender and Educational Desire, Black British Feminism ja Young Female and Black, which was voted in the top 40 most influential educational studies in Britain. A leading voice in the global debate on decolonisation she co-edited the flagship book, ‘Dismantling Race in Higher Education: Racism, whiteness and decolonising the academy’. She recently led the influential Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) Deaton Review of ‘Race and ethnic inequalities’ which includes the impact of COVID-19 on Black and minority ethnic communities. Race and ethnic inequalities | Oxford Open Economics | Oxford Academic
Entrepreneur and Professor of Practice Shadia Rask
Avauspuheenvuoro: Diversity and Social Sustainability in Ageing Welfare States: Negotiations of Deservingness and Trust
Ageing societies such as Finland seek to attract foreign workers to offset the shrinking working-age population and strengthen the economic sustainability of the welfare state. At the same time, receiving countries struggle with uneven integration outcomes, growing opposition to immigration and increasing cultural diversity. A central paradox emerges: immigration is needed, but immigrants are not wanted.
My keynote draws together research findings and lived experiences to explore how deservingness and trust are negotiated. Through interviews with women from immigrant backgrounds, I illustrate the tensions and pressure generated by xenophobia and increasingly restrictive immigration policies. For example, Roya Ranjbar, Head of Operations at AIDA, reflected in 2023:
“It’s not just about waiting a few more years. It’s the prolonged uncertainty and nightmares. … When you are making decisions about citizenship and residency requirements, it’s not just some written rule. It’s about the best years of someone’s life. People who have wanted to come to Finland, to be part of this country, to give to this country.”
These experiences reveal how the boundaries of belonging and solidarity are continuously imagined, contested, and renegotiated. But what is sustainable, and for whom?
Biography: Shadia Rask is an entrepreneur and Professor of Practice at Hanken School of Economics. Her core expertise is on social sustainability, particularly questions related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and immigration. Shadia holds a PhD in public health, and her research has focused on inequities in the context of immigration. Before entrepreneurship, Shadia worked in research and development for 13 years at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL).
Shadia is a board member of UN Women Finland and Startup Refugees. She is also a columnist for the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE. Shadia is a nationally acclaimed speaker and has been awarded the ETMU Award and the State Award for Public Information for her constructive and research-based contributions to public discourse on racism and inequality.