My current research interests are mainly linked to human-animal relations, cross-cultural mobility, cities and material culture. I’m especially interested in diffuse agency and historical spatiality. Currently, I’m examining the history of unsustainable practices and animal industries since the mid-19th century and how they underpin contemporary crises. In my study on the shared history of human and non-human animals I also study the history of pets. I also continue working on the history of the culture of display. I have studied exhibitions as a transnational medium that, among other things, produced and represented the popular belief in progress. Empirically I have studied and continue to study world exhibitions as well as the first Finnish industrial and art exhibition arranged in Helsinki in 1876.

My earlier research concentrated on Italian history. In my book Constructing Unity, Living in Diversity. A Roman Decade (2006) I examined late nineteenth-century Rome not only as a stage for the construction of a national capital city but as a polyphonic and kaleidoscopic lived space. My doctoral dissertation (1997) focused on the formation of Italian tourism policy and administration in the interwar period, especially in regard to tourism promotion abroad.