GENERAL

I work as a full-time researcher in an Academy of Finland funded postdotoral project titled "From First to Second Generation Islam in Finland" (4/2007-3/2010) In addition I work as a part-time teacher at Åbo Akademi University in the Department of Comparative Religion. I have been at the Åbo Akademi since 1997, and before that I took my Master of Arts diploma in Comparative Religion at the University of Turku (1996). In addition to Comparative Religion I have studied Russian Language and Literature, Geography, Philosophy, Economics and Sociology.

I finished my PhD in comparative religion in 2004. The  title of my thesis is Immigrant Religions in Local Society: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives in the City of Turku (PDF 7,5 MB) . The major theme in the thesis is the multidimensional nature of locality (glocality). International and transnational contacts, immigration and global media increasingly change the lived locality of communities and people. The task of the research was to understand these various dimensions and their relevance in the life of the local religious communities. At the same time, the study highlighted certain aspects of current religious change Finland.

After the PhD I worked as researcher (8/2005-3/2007) in the MONIKKO project at the Population Research Institute of the Finnish Family Federation. The European Social Fund funded project aimed at improving the employment situation of immigrant women in Finland. In that context several studies were conducted, including a survey of immigrant projects in Finland, a Delphi study of diversity in Finnish working life in the year 2020, an edited volume of research on immigrant women in Finland and a case study of Indian and Nepalese immigrant women in Finland.

AREAS OF INTEREST

• Sociology and ethnography of religion, especially globalisation, migration and consumer culture.
• International migration, ethnicity, migrant communities and integration.
• Religion and migration in Finland both historically and today.
• Oriental martial arts in the West as a cultural phenomenon.

CURRENT RESEARCH

In the coming years several studies of Muslim organisations and youth in Finland will be published. In addition to my work I am involved in several other research projects.

INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION

During the years I have attended several international conferences and stayed as a visiting researcher in England and Denmark. In autumn 1999 I stayed three months as a Visiting Fellow at the University of Leeds at the Department of Theology and Religious Studies, where I learned to know Prof. Kim Knott's research on religion and locality. In November 2000 I stayed at the University of Copenhagen in the Department of History of Religions, where, among others, work Dr. Margit Warburg (religion and globalisation) and Dr. Mikael Rothstein (new religious movements). In 2003, I visited for two weeks The Center for Multireligious Studies at the University of Aarhus, Denmark. In January 2006 I had the opportunity to visit professor Martin Baumann at the Department of Religious Studies, University of  Luzern, Switzerland.