Project Leader

Aino Saarinen, D.Soc.Sc Phone: +358-9-191 28619 Fax: +358-9-19128616 E-mail: aino.saarinen@helsinki.fi, aino.saarinen@oulu.fi

Aino Saarinen is a docent in sociology at Oulu University and a docent in women's studies at Tampere University and a visiting Nordic (NorFA) professor at Nevsky Institute, St. Petersburg in 1999-2002. She is a co-ordinator or vice-co-ordinator of some international research networks, including NCRB and ITDG. She is studying the transregional crisis centre movement in Barentsin the context of evolving multi-level democracy and Russian women as immigrant in the Nordic countries. Aino Saarinen has been active in the women's movements since the end of the 1960s, and she was one of the founding members of Femina Borealis in 1993. She initiated NCRB while working at NIKK, Nordic Institute for Women's Studies and Gender Research, Oslo University, in the late 1990s.

At present, she works at Aleksanteri Institute, Helsinki University.

ICT co-ordinator

Leena S. Teräs E-mail: Leena.Teras@oulu.fi

Leena Teräs studies educational sciences, educational technology, information technology and women's studies at the University of Oulu. Apart from her studies, she has worked in planning and administration of women's studies and has planned, co-ordinated and carried out courses concerning women and technology. Her MA thesis at the University of Oulu deals with relations of information technology and images of gender based on materials from an essay competition for high school students in Northern Finland.
Also she has long experience of working outside the university in teaching, managing positions in several organisations and also in business life. 

In January 2002, Leena Teräs has trasferred to a new project WomenIT - Women in Industry and Technology at Oulu University to work as its project manager.

Project Leader

Olga Liapounova, D.Ps E-mail: Liapounova@pomorsu.ru  Phone: +7-8182-208240 Fax: +7-8182-208240

Olga Liapounova graduated from Moscow State University, Faculty of Psychology. She is a docent in psychology at Pomor State University. Her research deals with social work at crisis centres and shelters. She is a volunteer of "Bridges of Mercy", the NGO crisis centre for women at Arkhangelsk.

Project assistant

Maria Novikova, LLM

Maria Novikova graduated from Pomor State University, Department of Law, in 2000. She is has been doing research on legal protection of womenÕs rights in Russia and the Nordic countries. She has moved to Canada in 2003.

ICT co-ordinator

Irina Drachova, MA (Educ.) E-mail: iridra@pomorsu.ru  Phone: - Fax: +7-8182-208240

Irina Balandina was educated as a primary school teacher and a teacher of English. She is a doctoral student in social philosophy and is doing her research one the theory of knowledge and educational models. She has also participated in the ITDG network.

Dr. Riikka Pötsönen worked as the Finnish NCRB project manager from August 1999 till August 2000, during the the Interrek II funding.

The NCRB reference group has met at all the training courses, which means that each centre has a voice in the planning and monitoring of the project. Primary members of the reference group (in alphabetical order): 

NCRB project partners

In carrying out NCRB I, NCRB has been collaborating intensively with:

• Northern Feminist University - NFU (Steigen, Norway)
• Iris, Crisis Centre for Women (Luleå, Sweden) 
• Institute of Non-Discriminatory Gender Interrelations - INGI (former Psychological Crisis Centre for Women) (St. Petersburg, Russia)
• Femina Borealis - Women and Development in the North, autonomus network for research and activism in Barents 
• ITDG - Information Technology, Transnational Democracy and Gender - Nordic and International (NorFa) network for research

Femina Borealis brought many of the project's key persons together as early as 1993 already. The other partners are involved in various action programmes.

In summer 2000, NCRB established relations with the Crisis Centre at Groeningen (the Netherlands) involved in collaboration with the crisis centres at Murmansk in the context of the Groeningen-Murmansk Twining City Programme.