4. Dezember 2015, von IFUU

Helena Ruotsala (born 1957 in Kittilä, Finnish Lapland) studied European Ethnology at the University of Turku in Finland. Earlier she has also studied Ethnology at the University of Basel and spent a winter semester as a DAAD-Professor at the Institute of Fenno-Ugric/Uralic Studies at the Unversity of Hamburg.

Helena Ruotsala (born 1957 in Kittilä, Finnish Lapland) studied European Ethnology at the University of Turku in Finland. Earlier she has also studied Ethnology at the University of Basel and spent a winter semester as a DAAD-Professor at the Institute of Fenno-Ugric/Uralic Studies at the Unversity of Hamburg. Before being appointed as a Professor in European Ethnology she has worked e.g. as a Research Fellow of the Academy of Finland.

Professor Ruotsala has published several articles and books, e.g. about reindeer herding, field work, minorities as about Saami and Mari people, environmental ethnology and border areas. She has also been leader of several research projects at the University of Turku, e.g. “Gendered Rural Spaces”, “Turku as experienced and narrated in the Cultural Capital Year” and “Border. An ethnological study on twin-city of Tornio-Haaparanta”.

Her paper ”Everydaylife transnationalism and identity constructions in the twin-city of Tornio-Haaparanta” is now actual in Finland (because of the refugee crisis) and she will there shed light on the results of her study about the border and its twin-city.

Prof. Dr. Beáta Wagner-Nagy                                                                                                   Dr. Paula Jääsalmi-Krüger