Christina Salmivalli (born 18 September 1967) is a

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

professor of

psychology Psychology is the scientific study of mind and behavior. Psychology includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, including feelings and thoughts. It is an academic discipline of immense scope, crossing the boundaries between ...

and the deputy head of the INVEST research flagship at the

University of Turku sv, Åbo universitet , latin_name = Universitas Aboensis , image_name = University of Turku.svg , motto = ''Vapaan kansan lahja vapaalle tieteelle'' , established = 1920 , type ...

in Finland. Salmivalli is recognized as an expert on peer relations and

school bullying School bullying, like bullying outside the school context, refers to one or more perpetrators who have greater physical strength or more social power than their victim repeatedly by acting aggressively toward their victim. Bullying can be verb ...

Biography

In 1992, Salmivalli completed a master's degree in psychology from the University of Turku. She earned her doctoral degree in psychology from the University of Turku in 1998. Her research, on

social Social organisms, including human(s), live collectively in interacting populations. This interaction is considered social whether they are aware of it or not, and whether the exchange is voluntary or not. Etymology The word "social" derives from ...

and

personality Personality is the characteristic sets of behaviors, cognitions, and emotional patterns that are formed from biological and environmental factors, and which change over time. While there is no generally agreed-upon definition of personality, m ...

factors of school bullying, won the

Finnish Academy of Science and Letters The Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (Finnish ''Suomalainen Tiedeakatemia''; Latin ''Academia Scientiarum Fennica'') is a Finnish learned society. It was founded in 1908 and is thus the second oldest academy in Finland. The oldest is the Fi ...

doctoral dissertation award in 1999. Salmivalli joined the psychology faculty at the University of Turku as an adjunct professor in 2001, becoming a full professor of psychology in 2004. She has held several visiting professorships, including positions at the University of Stavanger in Norway; at

Edith Cowan University Edith Cowan University (ECU) is a public university in Western Australia. It is named in honour of the first woman to be elected to an Australian parliament, Edith Cowan, and is the only Australian university named after a woman. Gaining unive ...

Perth Perth is the capital and largest city of the Australian state of Western Australia. It is the fourth most populous city in Australia and Oceania, with a population of 2.1 million (80% of the state) living in Greater Perth in 2020. Perth i ...

, Australia; and at

Shandong Normal University Shandong Normal University (, English acronym SDNU) is a university in Jinan City, Shandong Province, China. It is one of the earliest institutions of higher learning established in Shandong Province since the founding of the People's Republic of ...

in Jinan, China. In 2020, amid the

COVID-19 pandemic in Finland The COVID-19 pandemic in Finland has resulted in confirmed cases of COVID-19 and deaths. On 29 January 2020, the first case in Finland was confirmed, when a Chinese tourist visiting Ivalo from Wuhan tested positive for the virus. Background ...

, the

Prime Minister A prime minister, premier or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. Under those systems, a prime minister i ...

's office appointed Salmivalli to lead a 13-member science panel to advise on efforts to mitigate the long-term effects of the pandemic.

Research

Salmivalli conducts research within the fields of developmental psychology and prevention research, focusing on children's and adolescent's peer relations and evidence-based interventions to prevent peer adversities such as school bullying. She has published widely on the role of the peer group in bullying and on interventions aiming to change the peer dynamics contributing to bullying.

KiVa

In 2006, Salmivalli began leading a team of researchers tasked by Finland's

Ministry of Education and Culture The Ministry of Education and Culture is a Cabinet position in the governments of several nations. In some nations the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Culture are separate departments; in others, the Ministry of Education and Culture als ...

to develop and evaluate a bullying intervention program. The resulting program, named KiVa (short for "kiusaamista vastaan", Finnish for "against bullying"), includes lessons on emotions, healthy relationships, and bystander responses to bullying. The program also outlines a specific protocol for school staff to follow when they encounter incidents of bullying. KiVa is Finland's national bullying prevention program; as of 2016, it had been implemented in over 2,300 Finnish schools. It is also used at schools in more than countries around the world, including the Netherlands, Chile, Italy, the United Kingdom. KiVa's effectiveness has been evaluated in a number of

longitudinal studies A longitudinal study (or longitudinal survey, or panel study) is a research design that involves repeated observations of the same variables (e.g., people) over short or long periods of time (i.e., uses longitudinal data). It is often a type of obs ...

. One study of more than 7,000 Finnish students found significant improvements among students' bullying and mental health at schools involved in KiVa, compared to control schools. A large-scale replication in the Netherlands, led by Gijs Huitsing and René Veenstra, found also evidence of the effectiveness of the KiVa program.

Awards and honours

Salmivalli was named Psychologist of the Year by the Finnish Psychological Association in 2009. In 2017, the Minister of Education and Culture, Sanni Grahn-Laasonen, presented Salmivalli with the Finnish Science Prize, worth €100,000.

Selected works

* * * * * *

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Salmivalli, Christina Living people 1967 births Developmental psychologists University of Turku alumni Finnish women academics Finnish psychologists Finnish women psychologists Academic staff of the University of Turku