Professor of the Year 2026, Jani Erola, is a pioneering researcher of inequality
The Finnish Union of University Professors has chosen Jani Erola, Professor of Sociology at the University of Turku, as Professor of the Year for 2026. The choice was announced at a public event of the Union Statements from the Scientific Core in Oulu on Thursday, 15 January 2026. The award amount for the Professor of the Year is EUR 20,000.
“Professor Jani Erola is a respected researcher of social sciences both in Finland and internationally. He has extensive knowledge of social inequality, the factors affecting it and the heritability of inequality,” says Teija Laitinen, Chair of the Finnish Union of University Professors, justifying the selection of the Professor of the Year.
“Erola’s work is an excellent example of how high-quality scientific research can have an impact on society,” she continues.
Since 2019, Erola has led the INVEST flagship project, which examines the state of the welfare state and inequality in Finland. A significant multidisciplinary cluster of research projects has grown around INVEST.
Erola is an active participant in the scientific field and in the public sphere, and he has promoted sociology as a discipline. In his 2010 book “Classless Finland?” Erola discussed the hereditary nature of social status and how it explains inequality in Finland in the 2000s. According to Erola, economic inequality is not so much due to the disadvantage of the working class as to the increased well-off of the upper class.
Erola has been a member of the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters since 2021. During this decade, he has researched and engaged in public debate on the impact of early childhood education and care on an individual’s level of education and social mobility.
At the beginning of 2026, Erola’s six-year term as Academy Professor began. Funding from the Academy of Finland enables the opening of new research directions. Erola intends to study the rise in the level of education and its gendered changes, the polarisation of the labour market, and the changes brought about by digitalisation, especially artificial intelligence.
Erola also holds several international positions of trust and is involved in significant multinational projects. In 2014, the European Research Council awarded him the prestigious Consolidator Grant to study the heritability of social status. Currently, Erola coordinates the EU-funded Mapineq project, which analyses educational, socio-economic and health inequalities at different stages of the life cycle.
For further information:
Professor Jani Erola, tel. +358 40 512 5286
Chair Teija Laitinen, the Finnish Union of University Professors, tel. +358 45 657 5757
