Completing this dissertation has taken nearly a decade. The conditions that have made this work possible extend beyond what can be fully named here: they include human collaborators as well as more\/other-than-human agencies, encounters, and both catastrophic and serendipitous moments that have shaped the process in ways I cannot entirely grasp. Acknowledging the partial and situated nature of this gesture, I nonetheless wish to recognise those near and dear to me, and those who have supported and accompanied this research journey:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thank my supervisor, Eeva Anttila, for her encouragement, which has accompanied me from my earliest considerations of applying for doctoral studies through to the final stages of revising this manuscript. I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to learn from your pedagogical wisdom and to grow as an academic within your sensitive and dialogical support. My sincere thanks also go to my second supervisor, Marek Tesar, for guiding me into the terrain of posthuman childhood studies and for your insightful direction towards relevant literature at different stages of the process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am grateful to my examiners, Tarja Pääjoki and Charlotte Svendler Nielsen, for challenging my thinking and practices through your constructive and critical feedback on both the artistic component and the written commentary. Your responses carried a generous supervisory quality, offering valuable moments of guidance that supported my process.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would like to thank my supervising professor, Leena Rouhiainen, and the professors and lecturers at Tutke and KuvA: Laura Gröndahl, Hanna Järvinen, Kirsi Heimonen, Maryam Bagheri Nesami, Tuija Kokkonen, Isto Turpeinen, Esa Kirkkopelto, Lea Kantonen and Mika Elo. My sincere thanks also go to the administrative staff, whose assistance has been instrumental in supporting both the smaller steps and the larger leaps of this research journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A special thank you to all the collaborators involved in the artistic-pedagogical phases of this research: the staff, children, and guardians who participated at the daycare and in the artistic component, Jan Colliander for photography and video, the artistic services at the Theatre Academy, and the children’s and adults’ dance pedagogical group. Thank you for your time, participation, and open-minded commitment to working, thinking, and dancing with me. My thanks also go to Loreen Fajgel, Mia Wiik, and Märtha Pastorek Gripson for their help with translating the abstracts, and to Sari Koskinen for bringing this work to its web-based form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I would like to thank my fellow doctoral candidates and colleagues for their collaborations, engaging discussions, and for sharing this journey. My warm thanks to Maikki Uotila-Kraatz, Pauliina Laukkanen, Riina Hannuksela, Nora Rinne, Tuomas Laitinen, Hanna Pajala-Assefa, Mammu Rankanen, Katariina Numminen, Elina Izarra, Tua Helve, the Dance Small Group, the Keko group, and the whole Tutke community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This work would not have been possible without financial support. I am sincerely grateful to Uniarts Helsinki, the Kone Foundation, and the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation for their trust in and support for this research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I thank my family and relatives for their grounding support and care: my mother, my father, Seija, Timo and his family, Riitta and Antero, Hinni and Lillu and the entire Colliander family. My heartfelt thanks also go to my friends for their companionship through changing seasons and moods, especially the Sevanto and Lahti families, Jaana, Kaisa, and my fellow artists in Xaris Finland Dance Company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
My deepest thanks to my closest ones: to Kasimir, for teaching me the fundamentals of relational ontologies through my being your mother, and for your sharp, critical engagements with my work. To Nikolas, for teaching me how to play within research and for offering an embodied sense of the temporal unfolding of this study through your growth. And to Miika, for the music, companionship, and your patience and love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This work is dedicated to everyone who is or has been a child, and to childhood as a profound state of our humanity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In Helsinki 21st<\/sup> April 2026,<\/p>\n\n\n\n Tuire Colliander<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Completing this dissertation has taken nearly a decade. The conditions that have made this work […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-start"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1637,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172\/revisions\/1637"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/actascenica.teak.fi\/colliander-tuire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}