My research focuses on the role of bioscience and biotechnology in societal change. I am interested in how embodied technologies become accepted or contested. My research has addressed the changing management of gendered chronic illness, societal debates about vaccines, and the cultural uses of population genetics and evolutionary theory.
Current projects
I am currently collecting new data on menopause experiences in Finland. You can participate here (in Finnish).
I lead the project Gendered Chronic Disease, Embodied Differences and Biomedical Knowledge (GenDis) funded by the Research Council of Finland and Kone Foundation. The project investigates the treatment of gendered chronic illness in the context of the reorganization of Finnish healthcare, societal debates about pain medication, and global disruptions in the availability of pharmaceuticals. The project focuses on three illnesses – endometriosis, hormonal migraine and fibromyalgia – which are all characterized by episodes of pain and debated in terms of their link to gendered embodied processes, especially ones involving hormones. We approach the management of gendered chronic illness through four sites: 1) patient organizations and patient activism, 2) lived experiences of living with gendered chronic illness, 3) clinical practices and clinical encounters, and 4) biomedical research on causative mechanisms and new therapies. In the project, I work closely with postdoctoral researchers Maria Temmes, Lilli Aini Rokkonen and Elina Helosvuori, doctoral researcher Ahalya Ganesh and Academy Research Fellow Henni Alava.
I am also a member of a research collaboration on The Somatechnics of Death in Life, funded by the Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) and affiliated with the Department of Ethnology, History of Religions and Gender Studies at Stockholm University. With my co-investigators Lisa Käll, Luna Dolezal, Ingvil Hellstrand, Donna McCormack and Margrit Shildrick from the Nordic Network Gender, Body, Health, we have organize four workshops in Tampere, Stockholm, Stavanger and Copenhagen in 2023-2026.
Previous projects
My Academy Research Fellow’s project Affect and Biotechnological Change: Three Vaccine Debates in Europe (2018-2023) explored the role of collective emotions in biotechnological change – that is, how biotechnologies become contested, rejected, accepted or routinized. The question is addressed especially though cultural debates about the connection between the 2009 H1N1 (“swine flu”) vaccine Pandemrix and narcolepsy, and the development and introduction of Covid-19 vaccines. The project traces the ways in which emotionally charged public responses to vaccines arise from how vaccines articulate and reshape ideas of differences, such as gender, sexuality, ethnicity, class, age and disability. The project uses four types of data: 1) bioscientific and public health articles on vaccines, 2) national and EU-level institutional reports and official vaccine communication, 3) media material, and 4) blog posts and online discussion forums. The project was funded by the Research Council of Finland.
My postdoctoral project The Politics of Belonging: National Narrative in the Genomic Age (2011-2016) interrogated how population genetics has refashioned belonging since the 1980s. While the project focused on national narration, it also explored competing forms of belonging such as ethnic, regional and personal belonging. The project began with the premise that technological and theoretical developments in population genetics have challenged the concepts of history/prehistory and global/local on which narratives of national, ethnic or regional belonging are usually predicated. It asked how narratives of national or communal belonging negotiate these changes, and how the mutually embedded histories of race, gender, and sexuality shape the forms of belonging that have emerged with population genetics. The key results of the project were published as a monograph Population Genetics and Belonging (Palgrave Macmillan 2018). The project was funded by the Research Council of Finland (Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher’s project 2012-2015) and the Kone Foundation (Postdoctoral Researcher’s grant 2011).
I was also a co-investigator on the project The Embodied Self, Health and Emerging Technologies (2017-2018) funded by NOS-HS and located at Stockholm University.
