Project team

Toomas Gross (PI Kone)

E-mail: toomas.gross(at)helsinki.fi

tel +358 2941 23085

Toomas Gross has a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge. Since 2003 he has worked as a Lecturer of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki. Previously, he has also worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, San Diego, and as a visiting scholar at Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropologia Social (CIESAS) in Mexico, and taught at various other universities. Gross’s earlier research focused on Mexico where he has studied the socio-cultural implications of religious change, religious conflicts, Protestant-Catholic relations, and the dynamics of Protestant conversion. Besides religion, Gross has published on the topics of cultural revitalization, respect, values, community politics, customary law, tourism, and local medical practices in Mexico. Gross’ current research is focused on the changing exercise culture (particularly the recreational running scene) as well as new forms of spirituality in Estonia, attempting, among other things, to bridge anthropological research on sport and religion.

Timo Kaartinen (PI Academy of FInland)

Email: timo.kaartinen(at)helsinki.fi

tel +358 2941 22638

Timo Kaartinen has a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. He has taught anthropology in full-time positions since 2000 and was appointed as Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki in 2016. He has also held fellowships at the Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies and the Nordic Institute of Asian Studies and worked as a visiting scholar in Australian, Dutch, Malaysian, and Indonesian research institutes and universities. Kaartinen specializes in South-East Asia and is interested in ritual, language, and performing arts as semiotic resources through which people deal with experiences of historical change and uncertainty about the future. His most recent research has been concerned with the politics of nature in the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, and he continues to study the long-distance migrations and social networks of the Bandanese, an Islamic linguistic minority among whom he began to do fieldwork in 1992.

Tea Virtanen (Researcher)

Email: tea.virtanen(at)helsinki.fi

Tea Virtanen has a Ph.D. from the University of Helsinki (2003). She has worked as a lecturer of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Joensuu, as a researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute in Uppsala, and, most recently (2013-2018), as an Academy of Finland research fellow at the University of Helsinki. She has also worked as a visiting scholar at the University of Cologne, the African Studies Centre, Leiden, and the New York University. Virtanen has done anthropological research on the Muslim Mbororo (Fulani) in Cameroon since 1994. In her research she has looked at the articulation between pastoral values and local Islamic moral conceptions. She has also published on migration and memory, Muslim pilgrimage, the Islamization of cattle symbolism, and the relationship between Islam and indigeneity. Her most recent research deals with the diversification of Islamic religiosity and the ensuing ethnification of Islam in Cameroon. Presently Virtanen is working on a book manuscript on the Mbororo youth dance tradition in Cameroon.

Igor Mikeshin (Postdoctoral researcher)

Email: igor.mikeshin(at)helsinki.fi

tel +358 44 9351178

Igor Mikeshin has a PhD from the University of Helsinki (2016), MA Central European University (2011), MS St. Petersburg State University (2010). Igor is a social and cultural anthropologist and sociologist, teaching sociology at St. Petersburg State University (assistant professor, 2018-2019). Igor’s long-term research interests include Russian-speaking Evangelical Christianity, the specificities of its hermeneutics, theology, and life style in relation to global Evangelicalism and Russian sociocultural discourse. Igor wrote his dissertation on the mechanisms and narratives of conversion and substance abuse rehabilitation in the Baptist ministry. Igor’s current project focuses on gender construction and family values in the same community.

Minna Kulmala earned a Master of Social Sciences degree from the University of Helsinki in 2014. Kulmala is currently working on her doctoral dissertation in which she explores the multidimensionality of religious conversion and ethical self-making in the Siberian eco-settlement of the Last Testament Church.

Sidney Castillo has a Master of Arts in Sociology and Social Anthropology from Central European University, Budapest, Hungary; and a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology from Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima, Perú. Currently, he is an associate editor, writer, and interviewer for The Religious Studies Project. His expositions in workshops and publications are related to anthropology, sociology, and cognitive science of religion. His research interests encompass youth and religion, new religious movements, western esotericism, religion and conflict, ritual and religion, indigenous religions, and secular identities. His Ph.D. dissertation focuses in the relationship between ayahuasca rituals and ethical self-making among indigenous contexts in the Peruvian Amazon.