Yle interviews the directors of the new Human Diversity project (28.4.2023)

Yle interviewed the director Virpi Lummaa and the vice directors Päivi Onkamo and Outi Vesakoski of the new Human Diversity project based in the University of Turku. The aim of the project is to discover how human encounters, such as trading, have affected the survival of individuals.

Lummaa digitizes parish registers and constructs family trees based on them. Vesakoski applies evolutionary biology to study the spread and deterioration of languages. Onkamo focuses on analyzing ancient DNA. The project utilizes ancient and modern DNA data, dialect maps, archaeological data and data of administrative and ecological areas. Among other things, Vesakoski and Onkamo with their groups are working on a manuscript exploring the possibility that the treaty of Nöteborg might divide Finland in two halves regarding dialects, genes and disease heritage.

The Human Diversity project aims to deepen our understanding about how Finnish genomes have evolved, how languages have changed and how genetic areas and dialects are connected to each other. The project is highly multidisciplinary and therefore the researchers’ wish is to broaden course selection of different faculties by offering more courses on Finnish history and the development of diversity, for example.

The entire interview can be found in Finnish on Yle’s website.