Areas of expertise
Biography
In my current postdoctoral research project (2023-2026) Alternative path to a better future: the natural lifestyle in Finland from the late 19th century to the present day, funded by the Kone Foundation, I am looking for answers to the question of why the natural lifestyle has been seen by certain groups of people at different times as a solution to the social problems of the time: Initially to the upheavals caused by industrialization and urbanization, in the 1960s to the environmental pollution, and today to the ecological sustainability crisis. The answer lies not only in the confrontation between nature and culture, but also in the cultural meanings given to nature.
In my PhD thesis Reform Through Body: Finnish Life Reformers, Natural Body Management, and the Problem of Modernization, 1910–1932 (2021), I examined the natural body management based on vegetarianism, natural healing, anti-vaccination, temperance and nudism in early 20th century Finland, and the Finnish life reformers who practiced it.
I have worked as a researcher on several research projects. From 2022 to 2023 I worked in the Academy of Finland funded project Humans and Ticks in the Anthropocene (UEF, ÅA, UTU), which investigates the relationship between humans and ticks from a historical, cultural and social perspective. My own research dealt with the social construction of tick-borne diseases (TBE and Lyme borreliosis) in the press from the 1950s to the present.
During 2018–2021, I worked on the Emil Aaltonen Foundation-funded research project Health, knowledge and expertise, which examined the criticism of biomedicine related to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) and vaccine-criticism in Finland from the early 20th century to the present (TAU, UTU).
In 2013, I worked on the research project Religion, Politics, and Nationalism: The Vatican's Foreign Policy and Nationalistic Tensions in Inter-War Europe (TAU), funded by the Academy of Finland. My own research was on Cardinal van Rossum's interest in Catholic evangelization in 1920s Lutheran Finland.
Research
My research interests include the history of medicine and health, especially the history of alternative medicine. I am well-versed in the European natural lifestyle ideology at the turn of the 20th century, and the related history of vegetarianism and anti-vaccinationism.