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Areas of expertise
Biography
Senior Project Manager Kaisu Paasio works as expert in Brahea Centre at the University of Turku. She has been involved with the development, promotion, support, encouragement and teaching of academic entrepreneurship and innovation activities. She is also a seasoned entrepreneurship lecturer and teacher trainer in entrepreneurship education. In addition, Kaisu has extensive experience in developing and managing various national and international development projects in entrepreneurship.
My ongoing projects include:
- PROMISE, Professional Noticing to Improve Entrepreneurship Education (Erasmus+, 2022-2025)
- EntrAL, Entrepreneurial skills for a modern education in Albania (Erasmus+, 2021-2024)
- Competences4ESD, An innovative ESD Key Competences Training Model for teachers in the frames of the 4SDG - Quality Education for ALL (Erasmus+, 2022-2024)
- UNI-Tel, Modernization and Internationalization of Iranian HEI's via collaborative TEL-based curricula development in engineering and STEM (Erasmus+, 2021-2024)
Read more about our higher education development projects: Development of Higher Education | University of Turku (utu.fi)
Teaching
Kaisu is responsible for the Innovation and Business Creation (IBC) studies, which is a 25-credit study module especially for students of the Faculty of Technology, but also of other disciplines at the University of Turku. Kaisu is also responsible for an entrepreneurship and innovation minor, which is linked to the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) consortium.
Kaisu's teaching portfolio includes e.g. entrepreneurship, SME management, pitching and entrepreneurship education. Her entrepreneurship basics courses have also been offered to life scientists. In addition to these, she occasionally teaches in the framework of various national and international development projects, e.g. entrepreneurship and entrepreneurship education. In addition, she works as a teacher and coach at the Entrepreneurship Academy of the international EC2U university network, which organizes week-long entrepreneurship camps for students.
- Lead of Innovation and Business Creation Study Module (https://opas.peppi.utu.fi/en/programme/86606?period=2022-2024)
- UTU Lead of Innovation & Entrepreneurship Minor in EIT Digital Master School (https://opas.peppi.utu.fi/en/programme/86606?period=2022-2024)
Research
Kaisu holds a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Turku School of Economics. Her doctoral dissertation "Making sense of the entrepreneurial university – A social constructionist view" examined the entrepreneurial university from within the university, from the perspective of university actors. The study builds on social constructionism, applying narrative methodology and a sensemaking lens to investigate how an entrepreneurial university is constructed from within the university. In the analysis, attention was given to the intertwinement of storytelling and sensemaking. Kaisu focused on how the university personnel talked about entrepreneurship in the university and what kinds of meanings they gave to entrepreneurship, university and the entrepreneurial university.
Kaisu's research interest is focused on the entrepreneurial universities, entrepreneurship in university context, academic entrepreneurship, entrepreneurship education and becoming an entrepreneur. Kaisu has participated in numerous international conferences and presented her research at them, in addition, she has acted as a peer reviewer and published in academic publications.
Kaisu is the lead of Brahea Centre's research activities, with the responsibility of the research strategy development and implementation.