Niina Manninen

I am a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Social Care and the BSc Health and Social Care Course Lead. I joined Royal Holloway, University of London in September 2022.

I have over ten years’ experience in teaching in social pedagogically oriented social care higher education programmes in Finland and the UK. I have also worked several years in social insurance sector in Finland. I am a qualified and a registered social care professional (Finnish Valvira Register) and a Fellow of the Advance HE in the UK.

My research interests center around existential wellbeing and value clarity in helping professions, and intersect moral sciences, psychology, social sciences, theology, and education. I am interested in professional approaches in social care and social work, particularly how students and practitioners construe, interpret and apply moral norms in service to others. I am also interested in new forms of spirituality and how these translate to social care and social work pedagogy and practice.

My interdisciplinary PhD focused on Finnish Social Services Students’ Education and Purposes in Life, and was partly funded by the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Educational Sciences. I have also worked as a researcher at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, School of Vocational Teacher Education, where I was responsible for a national level study on student selection procedures for vocational teacher education, financed by the Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture.

My teaching expertise lies particularly in social pedagogy and in social exclusion and social participation related processes and phenomena, in Scandinavian and comparative social policies, and in moral, life purpose and existential wellbeing related questions in social care and social work.

Currently, I have been developing our new BSc Health and Social Care Course, and I am teaching students across our undergraduate BSc Social Science and Post-Graduate MSc Social Work courses. For instance, I am teaching courses SW2001 Contemporary Welfare States as well as SW1030 Perspectives on People in Society. In addition to that I have been leading MSc Social Work Critical Reflection Seminars and I supervise MSc Social Work Students’ Dissertations.