Introducing the FUS Faculty: Heidi Toivonen

Nora McNeely Hurley Assistant Professor, Psychology

Ph.D. University of Jyväskylä, Finland
M.A. University of Eastern Finland
B.A. University of Joensuu, Finland

Office: North Villa, office 14, top floor
Email: hktoivonen@fus.edu
Personal website: https://www.heiditoivonen.com/

Heidi Toivonen joined Franklin University Switzerland in August 2024 as the Nora McNeely Hurley Assistant Professor of Psychology. Prior to her academic career, she worked for ten years as a clinical psychologist in her native country, Finland. She served in various settings from psychiatric hospitals to family counselling, conducting psychological evaluations and talk therapy with a wide variety of clients. She completed her PhD degree at the side of her clinical work and moved away from Finland to fully start her academic career in 2020. She worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Ghent University, Belgium, conducting research on environmental narratives in a team of literary scholars. In 2021, she became Assistant Professor of Psychology in the University of Twente, in the Netherlands. There, she taught clinical psychology, professional self-reflection and autobiography writing, as well as research methods. In 2023, she won the University of Twente Educational Award, being selected as the Teacher of the Year. At Franklin, Heidi Toivonen teaches courses such as First Year Seminar, Developmental Psychology, and Research Methods in Social Sciences. Her research interests include psychotherapy conversations and mental health interventions as well as the role of digital devices and mobile applications in our everyday life. She is also actively studying environmental storytelling, that is, how people experience and discuss stories about the environment and climate change, and what is their potential in helping us deal with environmental destruction both practically and psychologically.

2024-2025 Courses

PSY 199	The Psychology of Agency: Humans as Intentional Agents in Complex Environments	FALL 2024
In our everyday life, we usually assume that we are in charge of our own actions and can thus deliberately influence our environment. This feeling of mastery over our own actions is often referred to as agency and is a central and widely discussed concept in psychology. This course will explore the idea of agency from multiple perspectives, investigating how to understand humans as creatures that initiate, modify, and reflect on their actions (or do not do so), with a special focus on human agency in the context of the climate crisis. Students will review relevant research from different fields of psychology, while drawing insights from other fields, emphasizing the interconnectedness of psychology with other disciplines and its relevance in addressing complex societal issues. Students will get to practice research-based strategies for learning basic academic skills and cultivate their own sense of being meaningful agents in relation to their natural and technological environments and issues such as climate change. Ultimately, this First Year Seminar lays the foundation for excelling in academic coursework. Like all First Year Seminars, this course will cultivate the fundamental critical and analytical skills necessary to succeed at university.
PSY 202	Developmental Psychology	FALL 2024
This course surveys the major areas of developmental psychology - the science of individual human development. The overall aim is to introduce students to the fundamental questions, ideas and approaches in the psychology of development. The course emphasizes an understanding of the methods, terms, theories and findings in the field, traces human development across the entire lifespan, and explores the basic developmental theories including the biological influences on development, behavior and learning. To complete the study of human development, the course presents a multi-cultural perspective, examining the diversity of human adaptations to change across the lifespan, by cultures around the world.
PSY 215	Research Methods in the Social Sciences	FALL 2024
The overall aim of this course is to promote students’ understanding and knowledge of research methodology in the social sciences. The course has three main features: it addresses a wide range of perspectives, comprising both qualitative and quantitative approaches; it provides opportunities to learn and reflect from research practice in various social science fields, including clinical, developmental, social and work psychology; it encompasses both traditional/mainstream and critical research approaches, paying constant attention to real world research. An important part of the course is the “Research Proposal”, which students will draft in stages over the course of the semester. By working on their own research proposal throughout the course, students will have the opportunity to engage in relevant research activity, ‘learning by doing’ in relation to crucial research principles and practices.
PSY 210	Cognitive Psychology	SPRING 2025
This course provides an in-depth exploration of human cognition, focusing on both classic and current issues. In this class, students will discuss how cognitive psychologists build theories (or models) of mental processes, and how these models are used to understand and predict behavior. Topics to be covered include (but may not be limited to): history of cognitive psychology, research methods in cognitive psychology, attention, perception, memory, language, and reasoning. In addition to these subjects, we will examine the research on social cognition, motivation, and emotions.
PSY 232T	Psychology and Technology: A Tour in the Netherlands	SPRING 2025
This course introduces students to research and practice connecting technology to psychology and aims to spark an interest in exploring what technology can give to the discipline of psychology, and vice versa. The classes open your eyes to the everyday impact of technology on our psychological functioning and wellbeing. We will explore questions such as how can technology be used in psychological research and what is the potential of technology in psychological interventions and therapies. Can Virtual Reality innovations help us alleviate psychological suffering? Are mobile apps and social media only a source of digital addiction and suffering, or can they be used in ways that support human well-being and flourishing? We will also incorporate elements from narrative research into the course and ask how storytelling can assist in design thinking and in developing technological innovations. During the Academic Travel portion of the course, students will be able to appreciate first-hand the interconnectedness of psychology and technology by visiting Virtual Reality labs and by meeting and interacting with students and researchers active in various technology-related fields from Data Science to product development. Students will be exposed to recent developments in e.g. mobile app development and design thinking, and explore the business perspective to psychology and technology. Tentatively, the Academic Travel portion of this course will take place in the cities of Amsterdam, Enschede, and Tilburg.
PSY 314	Clinical and Abnormal Psychology	SPRING 2025
This new course combines two previous courses that had overlapping content. Students that have taken only one of the two (Clinical, PSY 313) or (Abnormal, PSY 301) still may take this new course. Students that have taken both courses (PSY 301 and 313) cannot take this one. This course examines the treatment of psychological disorders in clinical practice. Students will study the major patterns of abnormal behavior and their description, diagnosis, interpretation, treatment, and prevention. They will explore and practice current evidence-based treatments for individual and group psychotherapy as well as crisis management across diverse populations. Bio-psycho-social as well as spiritual models of care will be discussed with an emphasis on ethical decision-making and effective treatment planning and intervention.

Publications:

Lelli, F., & Toivonen, H. (2024). A Dataset for Studying the Relationship between Human and Smart Devices. Data, 9(4), 56. https://doi.org/10.3390/data9040056

Toivonen, H. (2024). Renegotiating Agency with Climate Fiction: Human Agency in Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior and Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation. interconnections: journal of posthumanism, 3(1), 63-84.

Toivonen, H., & Howe, C. (2024). “Grump mountain”: viewers’ attributions of agency to a climate fiction film. Ecozon@: European Journal of Literature, Culture and Environment, 15(1), 120-142. https://doi.org/10.37536/ECOZONA.2024.15.1.4915

Toivonen, H., & Lelli, F. (2024). The varieties of agency in human–smart device relationships: The four agency profiles. Future Internet, 16(3), 90. https://doi.org/10.3390/fi16030090

Caracciolo, M., Ferebee, K., Lambert, S., Toivonen, H., & Ulstein, G. (2023). Uncertainty and the limits of narrative: An introduction. Frontiers of Narrative Studies, 9(2), 185-189. https://doi.org/10.1515/fns-2023-2013

Toivonen, H., & Nikoleris, A. (2023). 'The arrow is never straight': Constructing Climate Change Knowledge in Reading Group Discussions of Flight Behavior and Annihilation. Cahier voor Literatuurwetenschap, 14, 85-98.

Caracciolo, M., Ferebee, K.M., Lambert, S., Toivonen, H., & Ulstein, G. (2023). Climate Fiction: A Posthumanist Survey. Interférences litteraires/literaire interferenties, 27(2), 6-21.

Toivonen, H. (2022). Ei-inhimillisen ympäristön monimutkaiset toimijuudet: Haastattelututkimus ympäristönovelleista. [The Complex Agencies of the Non-Human Environment: An Interview Study on Environmental Short Stories]. Joutsen/Svanen. Kotimaisen kirjallisuudentutkimuksen vuosikirja, [The Swan. Yearbook of Finnish Literary Studies], 98-122. https://doi.org/10.33346/joutsensvanen.113880

Toivonen, H. (2022). Themes of climate change agency: a qualitative study on how people construct agency in relation to climate change. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, 9(1), 1-11. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-022-01111-w

Toivonen, H., & Caracciolo, M. (2023). Storytalk and complex constructions of nonhuman agency: an interview-based investigation. Narrative Inquiry, 33(1), 61-90. https://doi.org/10.1075/ni.21062.toi

Toivonen, H., Wahlström, J. & Kurri, K. (2020). Constructions of Nonagency in the Clients’ Initial Problem Formulations at the Outset of Psychotherapy. Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 50, 77–86. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10879-019-09417-8

Toivonen, H., Wahlström, J. & Kurri, K. (2019). Constructing nonagency at the beginning of psychotherapy: The 10DT model. Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 32(2), 160-180. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720537.2018.1433088

Toivonen, H., Wahlström, J. & Kurri, K. (2019). Discordances in ascriptions of agency and reflectivity given to clients in the first psychotherapy session. Journal of Constructivist Psychology 32(4), 424-443. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720537.2018.1515048

Awards:

University of Twente Educational Award 2023 - UT-docent van het jaar 2023/UT teacher of the year 2023