Doctor of Social Sciences
Adjunct professor of social anthropology (Tampere University) and European ethnology (University of Helsinki)
I am a University Lecturer and Adjunct Professor of Social Anthropology at Tampere University, and an Adjunct Professor of European Ethnology at the University of Helsinki. My research and teaching are situated at the intersection of social anthropology and cultural studies, with a particular focus on marginalized groups and the production of knowledge.
Currently, my work engages with questions of intersectionality and decoloniality, as well as the inclusion of marginalized groups in national histories. I am interested in how knowledge is produced, represented, and contested in universities, museums, and other cultural institutions, and how these spaces contribute to shaping public understandings of diversity, belonging, and the national and other narratives that shape social and global relations.
My latest publication, Ensimmäiset tulijat (in Finnish, co-authored with Leila Koivunen), is the first comprehensive study of the history of Africans and other people of the African diaspora in Finland before the 1990s. In my earlier project, Rethinking Diasporas, Redefining Nations: Representations of African Diaspora Formations in Museums and Exhibitions (2015-2020, Research Council of Finland), I examined how African diasporic identities and histories are represented in European museum contexts, and how these representations intersect with broader discourses on nationalism, migration, and cultural heritage.
Both of these projects were partly built on my earlier research, which has addressed themes such as racism and anti-racism, ethnic and racialized relations, transnationalism, diaspora cultures, childhood and youth, and epistemological challenges in the study of minorities and marginalized communities. I have also explored broader questions of cultural production in multiethnic societies, paying particular attention to how art, media, and everyday practices negotiate difference and belonging.
CONTACT
Faculty of Social Sciences (SOC)
33014 Tampere University, FINLAND
anna.rastas(at)tuni.fi , +358 40 1909845
Link to Tampere University research portal: Anna Rastas – Tampere University Research Portal