Anna Reetta Rönkä
PhD
Postdoctoral researcher
Values, Ideologies and Social Contexts of Education
Faculty of Education and Psychology

I am postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Education, Gender studies. I work in A-SPIT / Syljen jäljet research project, which studies direct-to-consumer DNA testing and its effects on kinship and family ties. My postdoctoral project focuses on the experiences of adult adoptees in their search for their biological kin through DTC DNA testing. I am also a member of Research Group for Epistemic Matters (REM).
The topic of my PhD research was experiences of loneliness among young people living in Northern Finland ("Experiences of loneliness from childhood to young adulthood. Study of Northern Finland Birth Cohort 1986"). In my thesis, I utilized both quantitative birth cohort (BC) data and qualitative interviews and analyzed those using a mixed-methods approach.
I have been involved in two other postdoctoral projects as well. During 2022 and 2023 I worked in a project focusing on intersectional gender equality in the academia in the Arctic North.
I have also been focusing on issues of knowledge production in Birth Cohort studies, and research participant experiences in BC studies (Lives over time: Birth cohort studies as a form of scientific knowledge-production, 2018-2021, Academy of Finland 2019–2021).
My research interests include health and wellbeing in the northern circumpolar areas, loneliness and non-belongingness, norms and normativities, family and kinship relations, knowledge production and citizen science.
Research interests
- circumpolar health and wellbeing
- loneliness and non-belongingness
- family and kinship relationships
- mixed methods approach
- knowledge production in birth cohort studies
- research participant experience
- citizen science
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P.O.Box 8000
FI-90014
University of Oulu
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