Anna Reetta Rönkä
PhD
Postdoctoral researcher
Arctic; Circumpolar Health and wellbeing; Citizen science; Interdisciplinarity, environmental humanities and social sciences
Research Unit of Biomedicine and Internal Medicine
Faculty of Medicine
I am a social scientist and a postdoctoral researcher from Arctic Health research group, Faculty of Medicine, University of Oulu Finland. I work with 50% contract at EU Horizon funded project ArcSolution (August 2024-). ArcSolution focuses on pollution in the Arctic in the One Health framework. I am working on One Health model work with the team, and on citizen science project conducted with local and Indigenous peoples in the four study locations. My background is in cultural anthropology.
For the other 50% I work in the Interreg Aurora funded Insects of the North project (November 2025-). Insects of the North project combines quantitative ecology with qualitative ethnographic research and will develop harmonized and efficient insect monitoring methods and explore the socio-cultural significance of insects in the northern parts of the Nordic countries. In the project I conduct interviews in northern localities to study local people´s experiences and relationship with insects, especially mosquitoes.
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.
My current research interests relate to community based participatory research and citizen science approach in Arctic contexts; One Health; Circumpolar health and wellbeing; Intersectional gender equality in the Arctic, and Arctic loneliness. I am a vice-lead of University of the Arctic´s Thematic Network on health and Wellbeing in the Arctic, and the secretary of Nordic Society for Circumpolar Health.
Previously, I worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Education, Gender studies. I worked 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).
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).
Research interests
- circumpolar health and wellbeing
- One Health
- Arctic
- loneliness and non-belongingness
- citizen science
- community based participatory research
- interdisciplinary research
- environmental humanities and social sciences
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