Tanja Vesala-Varttala

yliopettaja
+358 294471568
tanja.vesala-varttala@haaga-helia.fi

Keywords: sustainability marketing, education for sustainable development, CSR communication, university-industry collaboration, digital storytelling, digital community building, diary study, reflective learning

Tanja Vesala-Varttala (PhD) works as Principal Lecturer in Marketing and Communication at Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki, Finland, since 2003. She teaches international marketing and acts as a researcher and project manager in European-funded RDI projects at the Research Unit of Entrepreneurship and Business Development. Her methodological expertise is qualitative diary study.

She has been developing marketing and communication studies in industry-university projects for more than 15 years. She is a founding member of Haaga-Helia marketing and communication students’ Creative Agency Krea, which offers branding services to company clients.

She is actively involved in many Erasmus+ projects and research networks, recent projects including LEARN&CHANGE – Collaborative Digital Storytelling for Sustainable Change (coordinator 2021-2023) and CORALL - Coaching-oriented Online Resources for Autonomous Learning (partner 2019-2022). Her current research interests focus on education for sustainable development, sustainability marketing, digital community building, community-driven business, and purpose-driven stakeholder collaboration.

Recent peer-reviewed publications:

Vesala-Varttala, T., Pal, A., & Koris, R. (2024). Fostering sustainability competences through co-creation of digital storytelling: Effects of COVID-19 on higher education students’ reflective learning. Journal of University Teaching and Learning Practice, 21(3). Open access: https://doi.org/10.53761/3va1xt56

Salonen, A. & Vesala-Varttala, T. (2023). In search of a common language among stakeholders. In: Samuel O. Idowu and Liangrong Zu (eds.) Elgar Companion to Corporate Social Responsibility and the Sustainable Development Goals. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 27-47. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781803927367.00011

Morgado, M. & Vesala-Varttala, T. (2023). Digital storytelling as practice-based participatory pedagogy for English for specific purposes. Language Learning in Higher Education, 13(1), 175-200. https://doi.org/10.1515/cercles-2023-2014

Hrebacková, M., Štefl, M., Zverinová, J. & Vesala-Varttala, T. (2023). Coaching for collaborative autonomy: A reflection on an inter-university course. In: Abegglen, S., Burns, T., Sinfield, S. (eds.) Collaboration in Higher Education: A New Ecology of Practice. London: Bloomsbury Academic. 224-228. Open access: https://www.bloomsburycollections.com/monograph-detail?docid=b-9781350334083&pdfid=9781350334083.ch-8.pdf&tocid=b-9781350334083-chapter8

Vesala-Varttala, T., Humala, I., Isacsson, A., Salonen, A., & Nyberg,C. (2021). Fostering sustainability competencies and ethical thinking in higher education: Case sustainable chocolate. eSignals Research.  Open access: https://www.theseus.fi/handle/10024/634436