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I’ve been working as Associate Professor in History since January 2018. Prior to my current job, I was a post-doc researcher for nearly 10 years, working in various projects, funded by the Academy of Finland and other instances. My professorship, i.e. my research and teaching is linked to the University’s profiling area called ”Crises Redefined”. I am interested in charting out how crises have been understood in long historical perspective in the public sphere, how and when they have emerged and why? By who?

I am a bit untypical Finnish scholar in the sense that I have never studied in Finnish university. In 1999, I left for the UK, first to the University of Kent, followed by the University of Exeter and finally Royal Holloway, University of London, where I completed my PhD dissertation in 2008.

My research interests are wide and varied, but the theme ”crises” tends to underscore and tie together for what I’ve done so far. In my PhD dissertation, later published by Palgrave, I examined the emergence of one of the most fundamental issues for postwar Europe, namely the Holocaust. I examined how the Holocaust started to appear in European historical culture since 1945. Additionally, I have written on the Winter War and the world’s reactions to it, the transition from war to peace in Finland after WWII (with Simo Mikkonen) and most recently with Matti Roitto about the ”American Century”, i.e. US foreign policy in the 20th century. Apart from the histories of ”great powers” I have always been interested in examining how Finland has been part of the wider European/global context.

Outside academia, my life is defined by ”downhill”. In other words, I am a skiing enthusiast (by skiing I mean alpine skiing). My absolute favourite past time is big mountain powder skiing, followed by speed skiing (my near-future goal is to break 200 km/h barrier). And of course, after ski is very important too! Whether a colleague or student my door is always open - figuratively speaking of course.