Laura Kohonen-Aho

D. Sc. (Tech)
Postdoctoral researcher

Research Unit of Health Sciences and Technology
Faculty of Medicine

I have a multidisciplinary background including a master's degree in social sciences (social psychology, University of Helsinki) and a doctoral degree in technology (industrial engineering and management, Aalto University). In addition, I have worked as a researcher at the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oulu (linguistics, conversation analysis) and at the Faculty of Education, University of Helsinki.

Currently, I work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Healthcare Education and Competence Lab (HealthEduCom). My position is part of the Hybrid Intelligence: Human-AI Co-evolution and Learning in Multi-realities (HI) research programme (funded by the Research Council of Finland under the Profi7 initiative), focusing on the use of immersive technologies and AI to improve healthcare and support continuous, lifelong learning and education.

My work involves studying and developing the use of virtual and extended reality (VR/XR) and AI in healthcare education. We are creating immersive and interactive learning simulations designed to support medical and nursing education in areas such as clinical decision-making, communication skills, and interprofessional collaboration. The developed scenarios include, for example, emergency care and home care.

Research interests

Computer-mediated communication
Social virtual reality
Distributed collaboration
Video-based research
Multimodal conversation analysis
Embodied participation
Healthcare education

Researcher information

Research groups

Researcher profiles

Publications

Scientific articles and book chapters

Spets, H., Keisanen, T., & Kohonen-Aho, L. (accepted). The characteristics of recruitment and assistance among peers in social virtual reality gameplay. Accepted for publication in Social Interaction - Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality.

Eilittä, T. Kohonen-Aho, L. Falcon, M., Wikström, V., Martikainen, S., & Saarikivi, K. (2025). The Emergence of Technology Adaptations During a Collaborative Problem-Solving Task in Immersive Virtual Reality. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM on Human-Computer Interaction, 9(7), CSCW328, 1–38. https://doi.org/10.1145/3757509

Kohonen-Aho, L. & Vatanen, A. (2025). Negotiating the sharedness of activities and stances in social virtual reality: alignment and affiliation in the activity of throwing darts at a co-participant. Human Studies. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-025-09795-0

Boudouraki, A., Cameron, H. R., Reyes-Cruz, G., Martinez Avila, J. P., Orduna, M., Varela Castro, S., & Kohonen-Aho, L. (2025). Contesting Control with Automation in Technology-Mediated Interactions. Proceedings of the Extended Abstracts of the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1145/3706599.3719855

Salomaa, E., Kohonen-Aho, L., & Martikainen, S. (2024). Navigating Between On-Screen Activities and Discussion: Multiactivity in Video-Mediated B2B Sales Interactions. Social Interaction. Video-Based Studies of Human Sociality, 7(4). https://doi.org/10.7146/si.v7i4.143519

Martikainen, S., Kohonen-Aho., L., Seittenranta, N., Makkonen, E., Falcon, M., Wikström, V., & Saarikivi, K. (2023). Text-based patient – doctor discourse online and patients’ experiences of empathy. Computer Supported Cooperative Work. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10606-023-09481-8

Kohonen-Aho. L. (2023). Transitions between interactional spaces: Working towards shared understanding in a hybrid workshop setting. In P. Haddington, T. Eilittä, A. Kamunen, L. Kohonen-Aho, I. Rautiainen & A. Vatanen (Eds.), Complexity of Interaction: Studies in Multimodal Conversation Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30727-0_13

Haddington, P., Kohonen-Aho, L., Tuncer, S., & Spets, H. (2023). Openings of interactions in immersive virtual reality: identifying and recognising prospective co-participants. In P. Haddington, T. Eilittä, A. Kamunen, L. Kohonen-Aho, I. Rautiainen & A. Vatanen (Eds.), Complexity of Interaction: Studies in Multimodal Conversation Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30727-0_12

Eilittä, T., Haddington, P., Kamunen, P., Kohonen-Aho, L., Oittinen, T., Rautiainen, I. & Vatanen, A. On the complexities of interaction: An introduction (2023). In P. Haddington, T. Eilittä, A. Kamunen, L. Kohonen-Aho, I. Rautiainen & A. Vatanen (Eds.), Complexity of Interaction: Studies in Multimodal Conversation Analysis. Palgrave MacMillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30727-0_1

Kohonen-Aho, L. & Haddington, P. (2023). From distributed ecologies to distributed bodies in interaction: Capturing and analysing ‘dual embodiment’ in virtual environments. In P. Haddington, T. Eilittä, A. Kamunen, L. Kohonen-Aho, T. Oittinen, I. Rautiainen & A. Vatanen (eds.), Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis in Motion: Emerging Methods and Technologies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003424888

Eilittä, T., Haddington, P., Kamunen, P., Kohonen-Aho, L., Oittinen, T., Rautiainen, I. & Vatanen, A. (2023). Ethnomethodological conversation analysis in motion: An introduction. In P. Haddington, T. Eilittä, A. Kamunen, L. Kohonen-Aho, T. Oittinen, I. Rautiainen & A. Vatanen (eds.), Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis in Motion: Emerging Methods and Technologies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003424888

Kohonen-Aho, L. & Vatanen, A. (2021). (Re-)Opening an encounter in the virtual world of Second Life: On types of joint presence in avatar interaction. Journal for Media Linguistics, 4(2), 14–51. https://doi.org/10.21248/jfml.2021.30

Kohonen-Aho, L. & Vatanen, A. (2020). Participation and co-presence in the virtual world of Second Life: Transitioning from a gathering to an encounter. Journal for Media Linguistics, Discussion Paper 2 (2020). http://dp.jfml.org/2020/opr-kohonen-aho-vatanen-participation-and-co-presence-in-the-virtual-world-of-second-life

Suorsa, A. & Kohonen-Aho, L. (2018). Knowledge creation and interaction: Developing the concept of Virtual Utility. Informaatiotutkimus, 37(3), 95–97. https://doi.org/10.23978/inf.76089

Kohonen-Aho, L. & Tiilikainen, S. (2017). Constructing shared context for temporary teams in virtual worlds with informal interaction. In Proceedings of ICIS 2017 - International Conference on Information Systems, Seoul, South Korea, December 10–13, 2017. AIS Electronic Library (AISeL).

Kohonen-Aho, L., & Alin, P. (2016). A processual view on social presence emergence in Virtual Worlds. In Proceedings of HICSS-49 - Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (pp. 491-500), Kauai, HI, January 5–8, 2016. https://doi.org/10.1109/HICSS.2016.68

Kohonen-Aho, L. & Alin, P. (2015). Introducing a video-based strategy for theorizing social presence emergence in 3D virtual environments. Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, 24(2), 113–131. https://doi.org/10.1162/PRES_a_00222

Kohonen, L. (2013). At the heart of virtual teamwork: The impact of visual biofeedback to social presence in computer-mediated communication. In Proceedings of CO-CREATE 2013 – The Boundary-Crossing Conference on Co-Design in Innovation (pp. 623–634), Espoo, Finland, June 16–19, 2013.

Edited volumes

Haddington, P., Eilittä, T., Kamunen, A., Kohonen-Aho, L., Oittinen, T., Rautiainen, I., & Vatanen, A. (Eds.). (2023). Ethnomethodological Conversation Analysis in Motion: Emerging Methods and Technologies. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003424888

Haddington, P., Eilittä, T., A. Kamunen, A., Kohonen-Aho, L., Rautiainen, I. & Vatanen, A. (Eds.). (2023). Complexity of Interaction: Studies in Multimodal Conversation Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-30727-0

Doctoral thesis

Kohonen-Aho, L. (2017). Video-based observations on the construction of social presence in virtual worlds. Aalto University publication series, Doctoral dissertations 200/2017. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-60-7666-9

Contact information

E-mail

laura.kohonen-aho@oulu.fi

Social media

Postal address

Research Unit of Health Sciences and Technology
Faculty of Medicine
P.O.Box 8000
FI-90014 University of Oulu

Keywords

Humanities communication Society, interaction, information social interaction Medicine and health sciences