Researcher in the Spotlight: Helena Huhta

Name: Helena Huhta
Position in the Faculty of Law:  postdoctoral researcher in SILE
Degrees: PhD in sociology
Fields of interest: Prisons and prisoner rights, critical criminology, socio-legal research, normative pluralism, ethnography and other qualitative empirical research.

Career paths: Before finishing my Master’s Thesis in sociology from the University of Helsinki, I was lucky to get a short job in the Finnish Youth Research Society (FYRS), which was then followed by another job and another. I have been extremely fortunate being employed in fascinating research projects ever since and despite the precariat nature of my working life, I have only occasionally dreamed of becoming unemployed. After conducting life-course research, I have better understood the weight of coincidence along with the agency and structures that shape people’s lives. In FYRS I studied young people from various perspectives: mental health and substance abuse problems, young people who were not working or studying (NEET), ethnic minorities, top athletes and artists etc. I also spent one year working in the ministry of education and culture as a secretary of the National Sports Council. However, my passion lies in prison research. My PhD is an ethnographic study about the meanings and consequences of ethnicity and race in the prison everyday life. I ended up in Calonia after Maija Helminen proceeded in her promising career and I inherited some of her tasks in the SILE-project (Silent agents affected by legislation).

Current projects: While working in SILE I have been able to continue prison research and together with new colleges to engage more explicitly in socio-legal research. In our research we have applied theories of access to justice, procedural justice and normative pluralism that have bridged the law and social world in fascinating ways.

Have your interests evolved: Working in various projects I have learned that it is possible to get enthusiastic even about topics such as elite sports or tobacco smoking if you find the right angle. I hope that my academic career continues being surprising and eventful. However, I also believe that I have created a life-long relationship with prison and I will always return to it when I have the chance.

If I was not a researcher, what would I be? This is a question I have often asked myself but found no satisfying answer. Before uni, I studied restoring traditional houses, and therefore I can use an axe and see beauty in patinas, but I doubt it would help much in finding employment. I might try if I would be accepted in midwifery education. One option is becoming an unemployed climate and animal right activist. In this scenario I would also spend time flâneuring and reading the literature (criminology, feminism, pragmatism, old anthropological studies, sociological classics etc.) that I don’t have the time for while working.

What inspires you: Think of an environment where practically every aspect of life is regulated by either law or institutional practices and where the unwritten social norms add their seemingly contradictory structures to life. When you first enter this environment, you understand hardly anything that is happening around you. Prison is a field where criminological and sociological imagination has a never-ending source of material and unlimited number of puzzles that will haunt you until you figure out their logics and patterns. In addition to inspiring topics, I also find myself privileged to be surrounded by inspiring and intelligent colleagues and students who keep providing new angles in making sense of this world.