SDG Week: Punchlines and Power - Confronting Colonialism in Academia. With CR Module and Diploma Programme Get-together

The event opens with a stand-up comedy set by Karim Aldulaimi, whose material draws on life between two cultures. His humour offers sharp observations on everyday life and the quirks of Finnish culture, seen through an outsider's eye.
Bringing together activists and researchers, the panel examines the role academic institutions have played – and continue to play – in creating and maintaining colonialism and the hegemony of Western knowledge. Panelists will explore how mechanisms such as gatekeeping, precarious employment, and research agendas quietly sustain colonial hierarchies within universities. The discussion will also confront denial closer to home, including the myth of Nordic innocence on race. Together, these threads raise a central question: what must universities do to confront racism?

The panelists:

Nina Mata is a Finnish-Dominican graduate student at the University of Turku in Media Studies. She is also the co-chair in the antiracist and feminist organisation Fem-R. She enjoys having hard conversations about racism, human rights and of course popular culture.

Eugene Ufoka holds a Master's in Social Service focused on global change and community development and has over six years of experience working in anti-racism, DEI, and social inclusion across Finland's public, third, and private sectors. He is a political and human rights activist and community organizer with the African Anti Racism Society Finland (AFARS), where his work centres on addressing anti-Blackness and racial discrimination and advancing social inclusion for racialized minority communities. He's also interested in diplomacy, democracy, gender equality, and the prevention of radical extremism.

Neema Komba is a doctoral researcher in Entrepreneurship at Hanken School of Economics, interested in responsible entrepreneurship and curious about institutions, corruption, intersectionality, and sustainability. She is also a poet and writer whose work spans various genres of literature. She often writes to resist despair; exploring how to remain human (and hopeful) in the face of oppression and life’s harsh realities.

Saara Loukola is an internationally experienced teacher, teacher trainer and doctoral researcher whose work bridges educational practice, professional learning, and research on antiracism. Her doctoral research at the University of Helsinki examines how responsibility for antiracism is distributed between individuals and institutions in Finnish lower secondary schools. She has just started as a Social Sustainability Coordinator at Hanken School of Economics.
 

The event is part of the SDG week. You can access the full programme here: SDG week 2026