Pekka Kämäräinen is a Finnish educational researcher working at Institut Technik & Bildung (ITB), University of Bremen. During his early career years (1986 – 1994) he worked as one of the founding members of the Work Research Centre of the University of Tampere. At that time he specialised in comparative and international research on vocational education and training (VET). In 1990-1992 he supported a joint Nordic (Scandinavian) R&D program for vocational teachers and vocational teacher educators.
In 1994 the Finnish government sent him as a national seconded expert to Cedefop (European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training), then located in Berlin. From 1995 to 2002 he worked as a project manager (temporary EU-official) at Cedefop in its new location Thessaloniki, Greece.
In 2002 he returned to Finland and worked a short while as a visiting researcher at the Vocational Teacher Education College (AOKK) of the Jyväskylä Polytechnic (JAMK). During this period he participated as a European keynote speaker in the International UNESCO Meeting on TVET teacher education in 2004 in Hangzhou, China.
From 2005 on he has worked as a senior researcher at ITB. He has mainly participated in European and international projects on workplace learning, vocational teacher education, training the trainers as well as use of digital media and web resources in vocational learning.
Pekka Kämäräinen has participated regularly in European Conference on Educational Research from ECER 1992, Enschede, on (with few exceptions). In ECER 1996, Sevilla, he supported Martin Mulder in the founding process of the VETNET network. During his years in Cedefop he organised symposia and workshops to promote knowledge sharing between European cooperation projects and networks in the field of VET. He also took initiatives to create closer cooperation between Cedefop and VETNET (and their wider international pendants UNESCO and IVETA). After his service in Cedefop he continued his support to VETNET with similar symposia and workshops with focus on European cooperation projects. He has also supported VETNET convenors and program chairs in the arrangement of opening colloquia with insights into VET research in the host country and with reviews on the development of European VET research. Most recently he has been supporting the work of the WERA International Research Network on “Internationalisation of VET research” (WERA IRN-VET) as its rapporteur for WERA.