Juha Nieminen

I am a specialist psychologist, psychotherapist and educational developer with more than 25 years of experience working with professional competence development, the psychology of teaching and learning, and research on higher education. At Karolinska Institutet (KI), I lead a team of educational developers who give courses to our educators, consult in educational matters, and contribute to the evaluation of teaching and learning at KI.

As both a psychologist and an expert on higher education, I am particularly interested in perspectives where an individual learner’s cognition, motivation, and well-being intersect with the learning environment, institutional organization and culture. While working at the University of Helsinki, I helped create study psychologist services in Finland and worked as a study psychologist for 15 years, simultaneously  giving courses on teaching and learning to staff.  At KI I have worked with a broad range of topics, with a particular focus on research education. I have been lucky to have had the chance to work in several international projects aiming to improve the training of doctoral supervisors in Africa, Asia, and Europe.

My own research interests include student approaches to learning, student motivation and well-being, team-based learning, clinical teaching and doctoral education. I am employed as a manager at the Unit for Teaching and Learning and as a lecturer at the Department of Learning Informatics and Management (LIME) at Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and serve as a research fellow at Stellenbosch University, South Africa.