Public Defence of Doctoral Thesis by Doctoral Researcher Jenny Skrifvars

Doctoral Researcher Jenny Skrifvars successfully defended her doctoral thesis entitled “Investigating and Improving the Quality of Asylum Interviewing and Decision-Making Practices in Finland” on Saturday, 26 October 2024. Professor of Practice Julia Korkman, Åbo Akademi University, and the Co-Principal Investigator of Psych-AID, served as the custos, while Professor Pär-Anders Granhag, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, served as the opponent. The thesis was supervised by Professors Jan Antfolk and Julia Korkman and reviewed by Professors Pär-Anders Granhag and Dr Jane Herlihy, Centre for the Study of Emotion & Law, Royal Holloway University of London

Opening of the defence by Professor Julia

The Defence

The event started with Prof. Korkman welcoming and introducing the audience. After that, Jenny delivered her lectio praecursoria, in which she laid out the motivations behind her research project, the materials and methods used within the thesis, and provided a summary of the main results. This was followed by the formal examination by Prof. Granhag, who focused his questions on the scope of the work, the limitations of the methods, and the impact of the work. Finally, after two hours of questions, Professor Granhag declared that the doctoral thesis should be accepted and that Jenny should be conferred with the Doctor of Philosophy in Psychology title.

Jenny presenting
Jenny
Prof. Granhag demonstrating something on the board

In attendance at the occasion were members of the Psych-AID networks, faculty members of the psychology department, members of the university community, as well as Jenny’s family and friends. Collaborators of the Psych-AID network also joined online.

Jenny will continue to work on the Psych-AID project as a postdoctoral researcher. From all of us at Psych-AID, we are so happy and proud of you, Jenny. Congratulations and success in your research career. The doctoral thesis can be read at Doria and is based on the following original peer-reviewed publications.

  1. Skrifvars, J., Korkman, J., Sui, V., van Veldhuizen, T., & Antfolk, J. (2020). An analysis of question style and type in official Finnish asylum interview transcripts. Journal of Investigative Psychology and Offender Profiling, 17(3), 333–348. https://doi.org/10.1002/jip.1557
  2. Skrifvars, J., Antfolk, J., Veldhuizen, T., Sui, V., & Korkman, J. (2022). Eliciting information in official Finnish asylum interviews. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 36(3), 508–519. https://doi.org/10.1002/acp.3936
  3. Skrifvars, J., Sui, V., Antfolk, J., van Veldhuizen, T., & Korkman, J. (2022). Psychological assumptions underlying credibility assessments in Finnish asylum determinations. Nordic Psychology. https://doi.org/10.1080/19012276.2022.2145986
  4. Skrifvars, J., Antfolk, J., & Korkman, J. (2025). Developing and evaluating a training programme in legal psychology for Finnish asylum officials. Psychology, Crime & Law, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/1068316X.2025.2456254 (published later after defence)