Dr. Hanna Poikonen

is an academic guest at the Social Brain Sciences lab collaborating with the political scientist Dr. Aydin Yildirim on neuropolitics. On 2019-2023, she conducted her postdoc training at another ETH D-GESS lab, Learning Sciences and Higher Education. Her research focused on math expertise and embodied cognition which expanded her interest in expertise and the brain from dancers and musicians to mathematicians. Currently, she is also a guest researcher at the Örebro University Hospital in Sweden investigating the influence of creative movement intervention in people with schizophrenia.

By combining her background in biomedical engineering, neuroscience and dance, in 2018 Hanna pursued her doctoral degree at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Helsinki focusing on cortical oscillation (EEG) in professional dancers, musicians and novices when watching a video-recorded dance performance. With high interest in naturalistic brain research, she brought a live dance duet to the LIVELab of McMaster University in Canada. She has also studied contemporary dance, postgraduate in art therapy at Metàfora, Barcelona, and conducted her artscience project at the Museum of Contemporary Art Barcelona (MACBA). Since 2018, she is also teaching globally her WiseMotion method on neuroscience and creative movement for educators, creative and healthcare professionals, higher executives, and people with a brain-related illness. Through WiseMotion, Hanna also partners in different EU projects.