Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen

Pirita Seitamaa-Hakkarainen is professor of Craft Studies at the University of Helsinki, Department of Teacher Education. She is also docent at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Architecture in Helsinki, Finland. She has built her research program on the development and application of cognitive theories of design processes. She has carried out several research projects funded by the Academy of Finland. The main focus of the overall research is to analyse expertise in design, the nature of the design process and the role of external representations, i.e., sketching and model making during the design process. In recent years she has been mostly interested in analysing collaboration and communication in design projects, the nature of distributed expertise and the theory of knowledge creation. The role of scaffolding in craft education settings, both scaffolding in social interaction as well as that mediated by material artefacts has been another focus of her research. She is Principal Investigator together with professor Maarit Mäkelä in the Handling Mind: Embodiment, Creativity and Design research project funded by the Academy of Finland (2013-2016).