We research 

The research community Sustainable Naturecultures and Multispecies Futures (SuMu) explores changes in the North and the relations between Northern regions, people and the environment. 

The research community brings together researchers across the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences and arts who are engaged with naturecultures, multispecies relations, Sámi and Indigenous studies and the politics of natural resources in times of planetary transformation. We share a commitment to exercising and enhancing ethical agency through our research and teaching. 

Our objectives are: 

  1. To study and understand planetary transformation from a multidisciplinary, Northern perspective. We aim to create and cultivate new, multidisciplinary perspectives that combine research and the arts to understand planetary transformation and the dynamics of ecosocial coexistence
  2. To continue building a prominent international research community that examines Northern environments and multispecies coexistence. We wish to strengthen the international role of our multidisciplinary research community
  3. To act as an active and open link between research, the arts, and societal dialogue. We create and maintain dynamic spaces where research, arts and societal dialogue meet to discuss the changes in the North in ecological crisis.

Get to know our researchers

Outi Rantala

Professor

Faculty of Social Sciences

+358 40 484 4202 outi.rantala@ulapland.fi Research profile

Birgitta Vinkka

Junior Researcher

Faculty of Social Sciences

Birgitta Vinkka (M.Soc.Sc) is a junior researcher in the field of environmental sociology. In her PhD Project, she explores questions of environmental loss, focusing particularly on life with vanishing snow in the climate-changing urban Arctic. Her methodological interests lie in ethnography and creative, practice-based methods. Birgitta’s work is often multidisciplinary, as she has collaborated with both natural scientist and artist-researchers.

Valuing the SuMu research community, Birgitta has taken an active role in organizing collective research activities. In March 2025, she and Veera Kinnunen invited the community to participate in a performative, collective field trip to explore the “urban glacier,” a local snow‑deposit site. Since September 2025, she has also been coordinating SuMu’s academic writing sessions.

Birgitta encourages and organizes SuMu’s on-site events at the University of Lapland and in Rovaniemi area.

+358 40 159 1352 birgitta.vinkka@ulapland.fi Research profile

Tiamat Warda

Postdoctoral Researcher

Faculty of Social Sciences

Tiamat Warda is an anthrozoologist and Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Lapland on the Research Council of Finland-funded project People and Animal Wellbeing at Work and in Society. Tiamat’s interdisciplinary work spans Anthrozoology, Animal Organization Studies, Disability Studies, and Sociology. Her book, Interspecies Emotional Labour, published in Routledge’s Multispecies Encounters series, develops the concept of sustainable interspecies emotional labour. Tiamat’s publications critically address topics concerning how organizational processes impact interspecies emotional labour performances, well-being and working success of multispecies workers, employment for disabled professionals in multispecies workplaces, as well as the role of identity in interspecies working contexts.

Tiamat is looking after the monthly SuMu Newsletter.

+358 40 160 6290 tiamat.warda@ulapland.fi Research profile

Get to know our other SuMu researchers in the University of Lapland’s research portal

Researchers

SuMu Symposium in Rovaniemi

We had our first SuMu Symposium in Rovaniemi in 2025.

Read more

Publication on ecological pilgrimage

Our researchers produce a wide range of publications both nationally and internationally. In their conference article, Emily Höckert, Neal Cahoon, Outi Rantala and Maxim Vlasov address ecological pilgrimage as a solution for fixing the relationship between humans and forests.

Read more about the publication

Democracy as a bodily experience

The goal of the international AECED research project is to promote understanding democracy as a lived and bodily experience as well as to develop teaching methods that support this view.

Luossafanas 

Known for its long and streamlined shape, the salmon boat – or luossafanas in Sámi – is an epitome of Deatnu Sámi salmon and salmon fishing culture. The DEATNU project funded by the Research Council of Finland and the MÁHTUT project funded by Interreg Aurora carried out a boat-building project together with boatbuilder Jouni Laiti. Watch the short movie below. 

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Highlights from our research

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The salmon populations of Teno River have plummeted, regardless of Finland and Norway’s operative agreement, scientific monitoring and other institutional measures. 

The prohibition of salmon fishing tries to protect the salmon of Teno River as well as the local lifestyles and livelihoods that are dependent on salmon, including Sámi culture and society. The fishing prohibition has had a crushing effect on the residents. 

In the DEATNU project, conducted jointly with the Natural Resources Institute Finland, we examine the problematic situation at Teno River, the institutional decision-making and the importance of local knowledge in salmon fishing. Historically, salmon populations and salmon fishing in Teno River have been based on the local community’s values, rights, needs, practices and concepts. 

We map out the knowledge-based decision-making criteria behind salmon policies and investigate how local knowledge could be incorporated into the decision-making related salmon fishing. 

Project in LaCris portal 

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In her dissertation, Birgitta Vinkka studies the mutual formation of snow and Arctic cities. Vinkka’s research is based in sociology, and in her research, she examines how snow becomes part of the political, cultural and economic structures of the city, both challenging and enabling such structures. 

Examining the everyday life in urban spaces is still marginal in research conducted on Arctic regions. Vinkka’s research on living with snow offers knowledge on the formation of Arctic urbanism from the viewpoint of living everyday life. 

For Vinkka, working on snow offers new tools for studying the current period of climate change: instead of sustainability, loss becomes the central point of research. 

 

Read more about the dissertation here. (only in Finnish) 

Julkaisusta kertovalle verkkosivulle

In their multidisciplinary book intended for international audiences, researchers Emily Höckert, Afroja Khanam, Outi Rantala, Tarja Salmela, Tiina Seppälä and Anu Valtonen envision alternative narratives for the age of the Anthropocene – particularly ones that emphasise the significance of localised and situated knowledge. 

The book outlines new and radical ways of addressing the environmental crisis. It presents empirical studies from various contexts, highlighting the potentiality of non-Western knowledge, concepts and categories as well as recognising the role of multispecies entanglements in addressing the crises of the age of the Anthropocene. The book offers more sustainable and context-specific ways of examining and discussing the global environmental crisis. It offers critical engagement with the debates around the Anthropocene by challenging the dominant techno-rational agenda that often prevails in socio-political and academic discussions. 

Further information on the publication is available here. 

Last updated: 18.5.2026