Project Collaborators

Penina Blankett:

• Penina Blankett works as a Ministerial Adviser at the Finnish Ministry of the Environment. She is responsible for issues related to the conservation of marine biodiversity, both nationally and internationally. Blankett is responsible for the VELMU program (The Finnish Inventory Programme for the Underwater Marine Environment). She is also the Finnish contact person to both the ASCOBANS Agreement (Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans) and the International Whaling Commission (IWC). In addition, Blankett has also been actively involved in the work of HELCOM.

Nora Fagerholm:

• Nora Fagerholm is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Geography and Geology at the University of Turku. She studies human-nature interactions using place-based methods and aims to promote sustainable development.

Michaela Fenske:

• Fenske is a professor of European Ethnology/Folklore at the University of Würzburg, Germany. She is specialized in multispecies ethnography, human-wildlife conflicts, and human-plant relations in the time of environmental crisis. She has, for instance, edited a volume Managing the Return of the Wild: Human Encounters with Wolves in Europe (2020).

Juha Hiedanpää:

• Research Professor Hiedanpää is an expert in Finnish environmental policy, ecosystem services, and environmental economy and is specialized in decision-making processes. He is working in the Natural Resources Institute of Finland. Hiedanpää has a long experience in conflict management between different groups in Finland concerning the relationship between humans and wild animals.

Dolly Jørgensen:

• Jørgensen is a professor of History at the University of Stavanger in Norway. She is specialized in the emotional contexts of animal reintroduction, rewilding, and resurrection. She has published a groundbreaking study Recovering Lost Species in the Modern Age: Histories of Longing and Belonging (2019) of how emotions motivate attempts to counter species loss.

Jussi Lampinen:

• Dr. Lampinen is a plant ecologist specialized in nature conservation and the values and meanings associated with nature. In his current research, Lampinen aims to understand the possibilities for and limits to protecting the biodiversity of plants and to produce practical solutions for this. Lampinen works in the Biodiversity Unit at the University of Turku, Finland.

Olli Loisa:

• Loisa is a Senior Advisor at Turku University of Applied Sciences, Finland. He is responsible for the national monitoring of harbor porpoise (Phocoena phocoena) in Finnish waters and acts as an advisor in national and international conservation work.

Mari Pohja-Mykrä:

• Pohja-Mykrä is an ecologist specializing in biodiversity research, with a PhD in Environmental History. She acts as a coordinator of the Finnish maritime spatial planning cooperation.  She has established experience in human dimensions of natural resource and wildlife conflicts, human-environment interactions, and collaborative governance.

Genese Sodikoff:

• Sodikoff is an associate professor in the division of Cultural Anthropology and Sociology, as well as the Director of Rutgers’ Center for African Studies in Rutgers University, Newark, USA. She is specialized in the political economy of biodiversity loss, conservation, restoration, and extinction. Sodikoff has, for instance, edited a volume The Anthropology of Extinction: Essays on Culture and Species Death (2012).

Karita Suomalainen:

• Dr. Suomalainen is a linguist who currently works at Aarhus University in Denmark. In her research, she uses the methods of interactional linguistics, corpus linguistics and discourse analysis. Suomalainen has studied Finnish everyday conversations and the linguistic features of online hate speech.

Ilari Sääksjärvi:

• Professor Sääksjärvi is a renowned biologist and a director of the Biodiversity Unit at the University of Turku, Finland. He is specialized in biodiversity studies and leads a project Seili – Island of Life exploring the multispecies past of an island located in the archipelago of Finland. He is enthusiastic to combine the research approaches of natural sciences and humanities.

Elina Tuomarila:

• Tuomarila works as a cultural producer at the John Nurminen Foundation, which aims to protect the Baltic Sea and preserve its cultural heritage.

Nina Tynkkynen:

• Tynkkynen works as an associate professor in the strategic research profiling area of the Sea at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. She specializes in environmental politics and governance related to the marine environment and especially to the Baltic Sea area. She leads the Finnish Academy project Living with the Baltic Sea in a Changing Climate (SeaHer).

Anna Törnroos-Remes:

• Törnroos-Remes is an assistant professor of environmental and marine biology at Åbo Akademi University, Finland. She is specialized in marine ecology, focusing on benthic community functioning. She has also developed a tool called “Biological trait analysis” (BTA) for predicting the functioning of coastal ecosystems which can be incorporated and applied to management and conservation.

Katja Weiland-Särmälä / Laura-Lotta Andersson:

• Katja Weiland-Särmälä is the Curator at the Museum of Hanko and Laura-Lotta Andersson is the Museum Director. The themes of the museum in the early 2020s have been the relationship between humans and nature in relation to the Baltic Sea and the archipelago of the Hanko region.