Publications

I have published two research monographs. Population Genetics and Belonging: A Cultural Analysis of Genetic Ancestry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) explores how human population genetics has emerged as a means of imagining belonging in contemporary societies. It approaches population genetics as an evolving set of technological, material, narrative and affective practices, arguing that these practices enact multiple forms of belonging that are often mutually contradictory.

Gender, Sexuality and Reproduction in Evolutionary Narratives (Routledge, 2013; paperback edition 2017) examines the popularity of evolutionary psychological explanations of gender and sexuality by analyzing their commitments to and revisions of the Darwinian narrative tradition. Through popular, literary and scientific texts, the book identifies shifts and patterns in how evolution is conceptualized.

RESEARCH ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS

• Alava, H. & Oikkonen, V. (2025) Hormones, Culture and Puberty: How Clinicians (Don’t) See Gender in Pediatric Persistent Pain. Social Science & Medicine.
• Oikkonen, V. (2025) Navigating Pharmaceutical Effects: Experiences of Hormonal Medications in Endometriosis. Science & Technology Studies.
• Temmes, M. & Oikkonen, V. (2025) The Changing Landscape of Endometriosis Activism in Finland: At the Crossroads of Personalization and Digitalization of Health. In Health Activism and Sexual Politics: Feminist Engagements with Health, Illness and the Body (Routledge), edited by Lisa Lindén, Emily Nicholls and Josefin Persdotter.
• Oikkonen, V., Temmes, M. & Helosvuori, E. (2025) Menopause and Endometriosis: Tracing the Entanglements of Hormones, Ageing and Gendered Chronic Illness. NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research.
• Temmes, M., Helosvuori, E. & Oikkonen, V. (2025) Chronic Pain across Clinical Settings: The Changing Understanding of Pain and Its Treatment in Endometriosis. BioSocieties.
• Oikkonen, V. & Temmes, M. (2025) Self-Tracking in Endometriosis: Evolving Expectations around a Gynecological App Developed by a Finnish Patient Organization. Social Studies of Science.
• Oikkonen, V., Helosvuori, E., Ganesh, A. & Rokkonen L. A. (2025) Entangled Illnesses: Embodied Experiences of Managing Multimorbidity. Sociology of Health and Illness 47(2): e70006.
• Oikkonen, V. & Helosvuori, E. (2024) Living with Acuteness in Chronic Illness: The Temporal Underpinnings of Endometriosis. Medical Anthropology Quarterly.
• Meskus, M., Oikkonen, V. & Temmes, M. (2024) The Processuality of ‘Sex’ in Biomedicine: Exploring Stem Cell Research, Cancer Medicine and Vaccine Safety Research. Body & Society 30(4): 85–110.
• Oikkonen, V. (2024) Past Pathogens and Precarious Futures. In Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA (MIT Press), edited by Daniel Strand, Anna Källén and Charlotte Mulcare.
• Oikkonen, V. (2024) Anticipating Immunity: Vaccine-Induced Immunity and Vaccine Safety in the Finnish News Coverage of COVID-19 Vaccines. MAT Medicine Anthropology Theory 11(1): 1–30. Special issue on “The Immune System, Immunity and Immune Logics,” edited by Andrea Ford and Julia Swallow.
• Helosvuori, E. & Oikkonen, V. (2024) Sensing Pain: Embodied Knowledge in Endometriosis. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 28(6): 937–952.
• Oikkonen, V. (2022) The 2009 H1N1 Pandemic, Vaccine-Associated Narcolepsy and the Politics of Risk and Harm. Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine 26(2): 162–180.
• Oikkonen, V. (2021) Post-Pandemic Futures and the Affective Appeal of Immunity. lambda nordica 26(2–3): 21–46.
• Oikkonen, V. (2021) Conceptualizing Histories of Multispecies Entanglements: Ancient Pathogen Genomics and the Case of Borrelia recurrentis. Journal of Social Archaeology 21(2): 197–215. Special Issue on aDNA, edited by Anna Källén, Charlotte Mulcare, Andreas Nyblom and Daniel Strand.
• Meskus, M. & Oikkonen, V. (2020) Embodied Material Encounters and the Ambiguous Promise of Biomedical Futures: The Case of Biologically Derived Medicines. New Genetics and Society 39(4): 441–458.
• Oikkonen, V. (2020) Entanglements of Time, Temperature, Technology and Place in Ancient DNA Research: The Case of the Denisovan Hominin. Science, Technology, & Human Values 45(6): 1119–1141.
• Oikkonen, V. (2020) Belonging: Population Genetics, National Imaginaries, and the Making of European Genes. In Bringing the Nation Back In: Citizenship, Space, and Culture in Europe and the United States (SUNY Press), edited by M. Luccarelli, R. Forlenza and S. Colatrella.
• Oikkonen, V. (2018) Partial Immunities: Rethinking Communities and Belonging through Viral Memories of Influenza. Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics 2(2). Special issue on “Feminist Encounters with the Medical Humanities,” edited by Sherri L. Foster and Jana Funke.
• Oikkonen, V. (2017) Affect, Technoscience and Textual Analysis: Interrogating the Affective Dynamics of the Zika Epidemic through Media Texts. Social Studies of Science 47(5): 681–702.
• Oikkonen, V. (2017) Temporality and Belonging as Transdisciplinary Phenomena: Strategic Encounters between Queer Theory and Population Genetic Technologies. Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience 3(1). Special issue on “Science out of Feminist Theory”, edited by Banu Subramaniam and Angela Willey.
• Oikkonen, V. (2015) Mitochondrial Eve and the Affective Politics of Human Ancestry. Signs 40(3): 747–772. Winner of the 2015 Catharine Stimpson Prize for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship.
• Oikkonen, V. (2015) The Politics of Becoming Different: Rethinking Evolution through Population Genetics. Feminist Theory 16(2): 189–206.
• Oikkonen, V. (2014) Kennewick Man and the Evolutionary Origins of the Nation. Journal of American Studies 48(1): 275–290.
• Oikkonen, V. (2013) Narrative Analysis as a Feminist Method: The Case of Genetic Ancestry Tests. European Journal of Women’s Studies 20(3): 295–308.
• Oikkonen, V. (2013) Competing Truths: Epistemic Authority in Popular Science Books on Human Sexuality. European Journal of English Studies 17(3): 283–294.
• Oikkonen, V. (2010) Mutations of Romance: Evolution, Infidelity, and Narrative. Modern Fiction Studies 56(3): 592–613.
• Oikkonen, V. (2009) Narrating Descent: Popular Science, Evolutionary Theory and Gender Politics. Science as Culture 18(1): 1–21.

EDITED WORK

• (with Luna Dolezal, Lisa Folkmarson Käll, Donna McCormack and Margrit Shildrick) Special Issue of lambda nordica on Queering Health and Biomedicine (2021). Open access.
• (with Luna Dolezal) Special Section: Self-Tracking, Embodied Differences, and the Politics and Ethics of Health. In the Spring 2021 Issue of Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience. Open access.

OTHER ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS

• Oikkonen, V. (2021) Gender, Ethology, and Evolution. In The International Encyclopedia of Anthropology (Wiley Blackwell), edited by Hilary Callan.

PUBLICATIONS IN FINNISH

• (with Kuura Irni & Mianna Meskus) (eds) Muokattu elämä: Teknotiede, sukupuoli ja materiaalisuus [Moulded Life: Technoscience, Gender and Materiality]. Tampere: Vastapaino, 2014.
• Geneettiset alkuperätestit ja juurien etsintä. [Genetic Ancestry Tests and the Search for Roots]. In S. Irni, M. Meskus & V. Oikkonen (eds) Muokattu elämä: Teknotiede, sukupuoli ja materiaalisuus. Tampere: Vastapaino, 2014. 342-379.
• (with Kuura Irni & Mianna Meskus) Teknotieteen, sukupuolen ja materiaalisuuden muunnelmat [Transformations of Technoscience, Gender and Materiality]. In S. Irni, M. Meskus & V. Oikkonen (eds) Muokattu elämä: Teknotiede, sukupuoli ja materiaalisuus. Tampere: Vastapaino, 2014. 1–47.