Iiris Lehto

Iiris Lehto is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF), affiliated with the Department of Social Sciences within the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies. Her research focuses on Lean management practices in welfare and healthcare sectors, gender dynamics in biocapitalism, sociomateriality, and affective encounters in work environments.

Lehto’s work examines how Lean methodologies reshape care work temporalities and labor processes, particularly in gendered contexts. She contributes to interdisciplinary studies on organizational change, publishing in journals like Routledge Studies in the Sociology of Health and Illness and co-editing volumes such as Haavoilla - käsite ja kokemus. Her doctoral dissertation (2020) analyzed care labor in project-based frameworks.

Key projects include the DataLit initiative, investigating data-driven decision-making in public organizations. Her research often employs ethnographic methods, analyzing how management doctrines intersect with embodied, affective, and material realities in healthcare settings. Lehto’s publications span books, peer-reviewed articles, and edited volumes, reflecting her expertise in social policy, gender studies, and organizational sociology.