Heta Lähdesmäki profile picture
Heta
Lähdesmäki
PostDoctoral Researcher, History and Archaelogy
PhD

Contact

Arcanuminkuja 1
20500
Turku

Areas of expertise

Human-Animal Studies
Critical Plant Studies
Non-human agency
Cultural History
Environmental History
Wolf history
Posthumanism

Biography

I defended my Ph.D. dissertation on human-wolf relations in Finland in January 2020. My dissertation focuses on wolves' places - meaning their whereabouts and movements in Finnish nature as well as cultural ideas and wolf representations concerning their (prober or wrong) place in the 20th century Finland.

In 2019-2021 I worked in a project Elämän saari/Livets ö, funded by Kone Foundation. This project focused on the different species living on the island of Seili and studies the relationships humans had with their nonhuman neighbors. Now, I am part of the HumBio-project conducted at the School of History, Culture and Arts Studies and funded by the Academy of Finland for 2021-2025. The project investigates the human relationship with the disappeared, endangered, introduced, and non-native as well as invasive marine animals and plants in Finland.

I've been a member of the board of the Finnish Society for Human-Animal Studies (YKES ry) since 2014 and was the head of the board 2017-2019.






Teaching

I have taught individual lectures on Human-Animal Studies and animal history in the University of Turku and Univesity of Tampere. In 2015, I coordinated a lecture course with multiple lecturers on Animal and Plant Studies within Humanities with Otto Latva. In 2016, I organized a course with various lecturers on Cultures of Eating and Human-Animal Relations with Kuura Irni. I worked as a seminar instructor with Kimi Kärki in a seminar on popular culture and material culture for Cultural History master's students in 2014-2017. In autumn 2017 and spring 2018, I held a book club for history students on the topic of interagency.

Research

My main research interests are Human-Animal Studies, Critical Plant Studies, animal history and environmental history, more-than-human history, animal geography and posthumanism. 

Publications

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Vargarna och vi (2020)

Ikaros - tidskrift om människan och vetenskapen
Heta Lähdesmäki
(Kirjoitus tai data-artikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä (B1))