Teele Jänes conducted her PhD research at the University of Eastern Finland from 2021 to 2026, examining religion-based asylum claims in the Baltic States. The research topic emerged from her previous work experience as an asylum official in Estonia. While working as a National Training Coordinator for Frontex (the European Border and Coast Guard Agency) at the Estonian Academy of Security Sciences, she began her study of credibility assessments in asylum proceedings in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
Recently, Dr Jänes worked on a pilot project in the Department of Geographical and Historical Studies at the University of Eastern Finland, conducting fieldwork in Estonia's border regions.
She currently works as a member of the GeoEX project team in the Department of Geography and Environment at Loughborough University.
The role of freshwater connectivity in facilitating the range expansion of invertebrate invasive species.
Dr Jänes’s research interests concern international protection, migration, borders, and fundamental rights in border management.
Her PhD research examined how state officials assess the credibility of claims based on religion, one of the five asylum grounds. The study explores asylum practices in the Baltic states, as well as the perspectives of asylum decision-makers, both of which are relatively underrepresented in existing literature.
More recently, while at the University of Eastern Finland, she conducted research in Estonia's border regions along the Russian border, examining the perceptions of local residents and border guard officials on living and working in these areas amid a changing security landscape.
In the GeoEx project, Dr Jänes studies relationships between states and individuals, as well as inequalities that emerge within the asylum and broader state system with a focus on Finland.
- 2026: “Measuring Faith”: Credibility Assessment Practices of Religion-Based Asylum Claims in the Baltic States. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-61-6007-8
- 2025: Religion-Based Asylum Claims in the Baltic States: Credibility Assessment Practices and the Practitioners’ Perspective. Security Spectrum: Journal of Advanced Security Research, https://doi.org/10.15158/thdt-aw50