Antti Tarvainen, M.Soc.Sc., a researcher at the Foundation of the Finnish Institute in the Middle East, will defend his doctoral dissertation at the University of Helsinki on June 6, 2025. The public examination can be followed either in person at the University of Helsinki or remotely.
Where: Metsätalo, lecture hall B116 (Hall 1),Unioninkatu 40.
When: Friday the 6th of June at 12 O’clock
Tarvainen’s dissertation in the field of Global Development Studies is titled Silicon Palestine – An Inquiry into the Entanglements of Innovation and Settler Colonialism. Professor Timothy Mitchell from Columbia University will act as the Opponent, and Professor Anja Nygren as the Custos.
In his dissertation Tarvainen examines how innovation economy is made in entanglement with settler colonial expansions and struggles. The thesis takes place in ‘Silicon Palestine’: the shifting frontiers of technological innovation and risk capital that bring Israel, the occupied Palestinian territories, and spaces like San Francisco and Dubai into interplay. ‘Innovation’ appears in this dissertation not as a universal economic form but as a site of political struggle and creativity.