LSE has greatly influenced Prof. Seeck’s intellectual history. She completed her MSc, PhD and postdoc at LSE in the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science (previously Department of Social Psychology) and has previously served as a Senior Visiting Fellow (2010–2015) in the Department of Media and Communications, where she is currently a Visiting Professor. In addition, for the academic year 2023-2024, she received a Fellowship to University of Cambridge/Clare Hall College.
The research at LSE—which is interdisciplinary and critical with the profound aim of making the world a better place to live—has always been vital to her because those are her underlying reasons for conducting research and being an academic in the first place.
She has published about 100 academic and professional publications on organisational studies, media and communications and critical management studies. She has authored several books. Her recent publications include contributions to Organization, IJHRM, Media, Culture & Society, Management Learning and IJMR. Please see the list of publications for more information.
Her research is mostly qualitative and deeply interdisciplinary, combining social theory, political science, history and organisational studies with media and communications research. Her research has a strong sociological twist and historical orientation. Prof. Seeck’s work reflects her interest in soft power, power relations and control mechanisms in the workplace and society at large, their historical development, new forms of materialisation and their interplay with subjectivity. Her research focuses on the global and local travel of ideas, ideologies and discourses, as well as on agency, power and governance. For the past 20 years, her research has centred on three broad themes: (1) global travel of ideas, ideologies and discourses; (2) governmentality and Foucauldian studies; and (3) crisis management and communications.
In her research in the Department of Media and Communications, Prof. Seeck will, in collaboration with Prof. Rantanen, focus on (1) theories of ideology and propaganda and their different functions; (2) how they have been previously researched methodologically; and (3) what kinds of materials are needed to study them empirically, particularly in the context of news. Rather than concentrating on the content of ideology and propaganda, the research will focus on the functions of ideology and associated propaganda in different societal contexts.
Prof. Seeck also has ongoing research activities with the members of the Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science and Department of Management, for example, as follows:
(1) Politics of social innovation discourse: Activating the social in social innovation, conducted with Prof. Emeritus Humphreys, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science.
(2) Identity work and stigmatisation, conducted with Co-ordinator of Organisational Research Group (ORG), Associate Professor Lucia Garcia-Lorenzo, Department of Psychological and Behavioural Science, and on leader development, conducted with Senior Visiting Fellow Rebecca Newton, Department of Management.
Regarding Prof. Seeck’s background in Finland. She is a full, tenured Professor of Communication Sciences at LUT University, which is highly ranked small university focused on finding new solutions for challenges related to life-giving resources of clean air, water and energy. Prior joining LUT, Prof. Seeck received a full tenured professorship in 2016 in Management and Organisations, University of Turku, Finland. Since 2008, she has been a permanent Adjunct Professor of Organisational Communications at the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Social Sciences, Communication and Media Studies. She has also been an Adjunct Professor at the National Defence University in the Department of Leadership and Military Pedagogy since 2010.
She is an active member of many international organisations of the field. She has, for example, been an active member of the Academy of Management since 2004. In recent years, her papers have also been nominated by different academic divisions many times for the prestigious Carolyn Dexter Best International Paper Award, and her paper (with coauthors) also won the John F. Mee Award in 2021. She has also received recognition from journals; for example, her coauthored paper was the most cited article in Organization for the past three years. She has gained research funding, mostly from the Academy of Finland and several trusts and foundations. She is also a regular reviewer for many journals of the field and serves, for example, in the editorial advisory board of Management Decision. She has administrative experience as Chair/Head of Subject, Principal Investigator and Team Leader.
In terms of societal impact, she has led several research projects, for example, for major global corporations and for the Prime Minister’s office. She led the well-recognised investigation commissioned by the Prime Minister’s office of management and communication in Finland of responses to the Asian tsunami disaster. She is familiar with both private and public sector research and practice. For a number of years, she was a fellow of the Finnish Business and Policy Forum (EVA), the main business think-tank in Finland. She is also a member of the Boardman Management Study Group. As appointed by the Finnish government, she is Vice-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board for National Defence, MATINE.
She has wide-ranging pedagogic training, including recent training in neuroscience and learning. She has previous formal pedagogic training from the LSE (Teacher Accreditation Programme) and the University of Helsinki (65 ECTS, 2019–2021). She has taught extensively for 20 years, totalling some 50 courses in English and Finnish. She has taught at all levels. She has also experience, for example, in curriculum planning at all levels. Her teaching competence in English has been formally assessed and was graded as excellent in her nomination to her previous and current positions. She believes that, in teaching, the most important thing is to guide learners to think for themselves. Her basic approach to teaching is a social constructionist one; that being said, on the broadest level, she believes that the students and the teacher develop together, shaping and modifying our understanding of the world around us. Her teaching practice is aimed at facilitating the acquisition of the transferable skills of analysing, criticising and synthesising theories and practices, developing the learners’ own argumentation and debate skills and questioning the prevailing paradigms. She firmly believes that these skills are both a prerequisite for excelling oneself and of great use in organisational and societal life.