Hanna Toiviainen Editor

​Dr Natasha Kersh is a Lecturer in Education and a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy,at the UCL Institute of Education (UK). Her research interests and publications relate to the study of VET, school-to-work transitions and adult education in the UK and international contexts.  She has extensive experience of working and directing national and international projects such as EU-funded projects and UK-based ESRC (Economic and Social Science Research Council) funded initiatives. Natasha’s research and teaching activities involve active international collaborations and participation in a range of international initiatives including active collaborations with organizations and networks such as EPALE, CEDEFOP and  and Asia-Europe Meeting Lifelong learning (ASEM-LLL) network.   Natasha has authored/co-authored over 40 publications related to her field of study.
Hanna Toiviainen is Professor of Adult Education at Tampere University, Finland. In the EduMAP project she worked as co-coordinator and contributed to the broad research on adult education in the EU.  Her other research interests relate to work-based learning in interorganizational networks. Drawing on the concepts of cultural-historical activity theory she has developed analytical frameworks for multi-layered expansive learning in the contexts of work-life learning networks and global workplaces. Recent studies address both industrial cooperation and client orientation in public social and health care.  She is the co-editor of Working and Learning in Times of Uncertainty: Challenges to Adult, Professional and Vocational Education published by Sense in 2015.

Pirkko Pitkänen is Professor Emerita at Faculty of Education and Culture , Tampere University, Finland. Her areas of expertise include transnational migration, cross-cultural work and multicultural training. She has extensive experience in leading large-scale international and national research projects. These include five EU Framework Projects (FP3; FP5; FP7; H2020). She has published widely in national and international fields. Among her international publications are Migration and Transformation: Multi-Level Analyses of Migrant Transnationalism (Springer 2012); Characteristics of Temporary Migration in European-Asian Transnational Social Spaces (Springer 2018); Temporary Migration, Transformation and Development (Routledge 2019)

George K. Zarifis is Associate Professor of Continuing Education in the Faculty of Philosophy, Department of Education at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. His research interests focus on adult educators' training and professionalisation, university continuing education, and comparative examination of adult learning and vocational education and training policies and practices in Europe. He is the convener of the ESREA’s Research Network on the Professional Development of Adult Educators (ReNAdET). He publishes, edits and co-authors in the area of adult and continuing education, and participates in a large number of national and European research projects in the same field.