Concepción Cortés Zulueta
is a postdoctoral Fellow. Her interdisciplinary research focuses on the presence and agency of nonhuman animals in contemporary art and visual culture. She has lead a research project on the intertwined perceptions on birds and insects at Universidad de Málaga, Spain, and besides approaching birdsongs as history, she is preparing a book on the conventions and misconceptions on fly eyes and insect vision. She has made temporary research stays at La Sapienza, Università di Roma; the National Art Library (Victoria & Albert Museum); the New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies (University of Canterbury, Christchurch); the Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (MNCN, Madrid), and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Michaela Fenske
is a Professor and Chair of European Ethnology at the University of Würzburg, Germany. Her research interests include historical anthropology, narrative culture, anthropology of the rural, and environmental humanities. Together with her team, she established the field of Multispecies Studies at the University of Würzburg, so far resulting in studies on wolves, ravens, carps, bees, rats, forests, and apple trees. Her current research project âGardens in transformationâ focuses on multispecies communities in gardens. In addition, she engages in exploring the possibilities of socio-ecological sustainability on university campus (REKLINEU TP 10).
Sophie FitzMaurice
is a postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for History and Economics, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley, in 2023, where she wrote her dissertation on the material and environmental history of the telegraph system in North America. Her broader research interests lie at the intersection of environmental history and the history of technology and infrastructure.
Laura Hollsten
holds the title of docent in environmental history at the Faculty of Arts, Psychology, and Theology at à bo Akademi University in Turku, Finland. Her research interests include early modern history, the history knowledge and science, environmental history, and global history. She has been involved in the research project âHumans and Ticks in the Anthropoceneâ at the University of Eastern Finland, the University of Turku, and à bo Akademi University.
is a senior Researcher in medical anthropology at the Chr. Michelsen Institute (CMI), Norway. She is also the coordinator of the research group âPoverty and Global Healthâ. From 2016â19 she led the research project âContagion and culture: The 2005â07 chikungunya epidemic in the Western Indian Oceanâ. The study was funded by the Swedish Research Council and based at UmeÃ¥ University, Sweden. In addition to her longstanding research interest in arboviral diseases and multispecies ethnography, Karine has worked on pandemic preparedness, vaccine hesitancy and fertility control including abortion.
Otto Latva
is a historian focusing on humanâanimal and humanâplant studies as well as environmental history. He has studied widely the societies and cultures of the early modern period as well as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Latva has the title of docent in the field of more-than-human history.
Sanna Lillbroända-Annala
is an ethnologist and senior Lecturer at à bo Akademi University in Finland. She has conducted research in urban environments from the perspective of gentrification and cultural heritage, as well as in recent years with special interest towards non-humans in urban settings. Lillbroända-Annala holds the title of docent in the field of urban ethnology.
Heta Lähdesmäki
is a historian focusing on environmental history, humanâanimal relations and wildlife conflicts. She has studied for instance humanâwolf relations, bird feeding and rat conflicts in twentieth-century Finland. She works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku, Finland.
Heidi Mikkola
is a doctoral Researcher in media studies at the University of Turku. Her dissertation centers around the aesthetics and agencies produced by wildlife documentaries, exploring the relationships between humans, nonhuman animals, environments, and technologies.
Marianne Mäkelin
is a doctoral Researcher in science and technology studies and sociology at the University of Helsinki. Her work explores human-insect relations and knowledge practices in biosciences.
is a postdoctoral Researcher in the Department of Finnish History at the University of Turku, Finland. She specializes in the history of medicine and health. In her dissertation, she has studied alternative medicine, vegetarianism, nudism, and anti-vaccinationism, which were practiced in the early 20th century in the context of the Finnish life reform movement. In her current postdoctoral research project, funded by the Kone Foundation, she examines the natural lifestyle in Finland from the late 19th century to the present day.
Tuomas Räsänen
works as a Professor of Environmental History at the University of Eastern Finland. He specializes on the history of human-animal relations, the history of environmentalism, as well as on marine environmental history, particularly in the 20th century. He has been leading a research project, funded by the Research Council of Finland, that explores the relationship between humans and ticks in Finland.
Minna Santaoja
is a multidisciplinary environmental social Researcher with a degree in environmental policy, currently working at the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland, Finland. Her research focuses on multispecies agency and knowledge practices in different contexts. Human-insect relations have been a continuous thread in Minnaâs work and she has written previously on e.g. amateur entomology, sustainability of entomophagy, and response-ability in human-wasp cohabitance. She is currently the editor in chief of the Finnish scholarly journal Alue & Ympäristö on regional studies and environmental social research.
Taina Syrjämaa
is Professor of European and World History at the University of Turku. She has led two four-year research projects on animal history, financed by the Academy of Finland. The projects have focused, respectively, on animal agency and on the industrial exploitation of animals. Her current research interests focus on animal mobilities, on the history of cattle and pets, especially cats, and on the visibility vs. invisibility of animals in society.
Emily Webster
is Assistant Professor in the History and Philosophy of Health and Medicine in the Department of Philosophy at Durham University. Her research focuses on the ecology of historical epidemics, drawing on contemporary biology