Mikko

Toivanen

I am a research fellow at the University of Turku, where my work is funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. I specialise in the colonial history of modern Southeast Asia, with a current focus on the transimperial history of forestry and the global (co-)production of environmental knowledge. My earlier work has dealt with a range of topics related to the manifestations of imperialism in the Asian context, including colonial urbanism and public spaces in nineteenth-century Singapore and Batavia (now Jakarta); the development of travel infrastructure and leisure practices in the Indian Ocean region; and the global histories of Nordic colonial entanglements.

I have previously been employed as an assistant professor at the Centre for Global History of the University of Warsaw and held visiting fellowships at the Freie Universität Berlin and the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, among others. I defended my PhD, on colonial tourism in Southeast Asia, at the European University Institute in 2019.