Ilpo Helén
Ilpo Helén is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Social Sciences in the University of Eastern Finland and Docent at the Department of Social Research in the University of Helsinki. His research interests include health policy and health promotion; the application of high medical technology, different models of mental health treatment and the Nordic welfare state. Currently his studies focus on the collection, use and management of personal health and biological information within the biobank activity and on the application of genetic information in public health care and immigration policies.
Anna-Maria Tapaninen
Anna-Maria Tapaninen is a social anthropologist whose dissertation was based on ethnographic fieldwork in a South Italian housing development. Her postdoctoral research dealt with institutionalised child abandonment in 19th century Europe, in particular in the Neapolitan foundling home. Thereafter she has studied the use of DNA profiling for family reunification of migrants in Finland, also by comparing the policies in Austria, Finland and Germany within the trilateral research project DNA and immigration (IMMIGENE). Her ongoing research continues the previous one and extends its scope to cover also medical age assessment within the project Bodies of evidence: the interplay of documents, narratives and biotechnologies.
Miia Halme-Tuomisaari
Miia Halme-Tuomisaari is a legal anthropologist who has specialised in the analysis of the contemporary human rights phenomenon, particularly notions of expertise, bureaucracy and documentary processes. Her field sites include the UN Human Rights Committee, the Finnish Foreign Affairs Ministry and a Nordic expert network. She was the founding member of the Finnish Centre of Excellence in Global Governance Research (2006-2011), and she has long been a research fellow at the Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights; she is also an affiliated Senior Research Fellow of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology (Halle/Saale). She is the author of ‘Human Rights in Action: Learning Expert Knowledge (Brill 2010), and the co-editor of Revisiting the History of Human Rights (Cambridge University Press, 2015).
RESEARCH ASSISTANTS:
Hilja Aunela
Viljami Kankaanpää
Bodies of Evidence 