Dr. Carine Cools, born in Belgium, completed her doctoral degree in Speech/Intercultural Communication in 2011 in Finland. In her doctoral dissertation she approached intercultural couples’ relationships in Finland from the relational-dialectics perspective by Baxter & Montgomery (1996). Relational dialectics support the idea that tensions (relational contradictions are a fundamental feature of a relationship, and are thus distinct from conflicts or problems.
Dr. Cools visited USF as a Visiting Scholar sponsored by the CWE@USF program. The purpose of her visit was to collaborate with Dr. Lasonen on the ongoing research and teaching on intercultural communication, which represents an important area in the changing global context for education and economy. During her visit, Dr. Cools shared the results of her research on “Highly Educated Immigrant Women’s Experiences at the Finnish Labor Market” at colloquium conducted in November with faculty in graduate students.
Dr. Cools is currently serving as a researcher in a Finnish Academy funded project “Opening Pathways to Competence and Employment for Immigrants” in 2009-2012, where she focuses on highly educated immigrant women and the Finnish labor market. Her main interest areas are adaptation/transition issues in the context of intercultural communication research, and migration studies.
She is board member of the Society of Ethnic Studies and International Migration. She has published in English in international journals, and has presented her research in numerous international and national conferences. As Senior Research Associate she has been lecturing about Intercultural communication and research methods, in Finland and abroad (Australia, Belgium, Portugal) and has been supervising numerous students with their MA thesis. Prior to becoming a researcher, she worked for eight years as a nurse at the university surgery clinic of Tübingen/South-Germany, where she lived with her Finnish husband before moving to Finland.
We appreciated the opportunity to learn from Dr. Cools about her recent research on highly educated immigrant women’s access to labor force and wish her continued success on her work.
If you are interested in Dr. Carine Cools' research, you may contact her at:
Finnish Institute of Educational Research (FIER)
P.O Box 35
FI-40014 University of Jyväskylä
FINLAND
