Finnish social anthropologist of southern Yemen and Aden
In 'The Snake with a Thousand Heads' (Middle East Report 256, 2010) she documented al-Harak, the southern movement that arose in summer 2007 against northern marginalization, tracing it to the 1994 civil war.
Finnish social anthropologist working on southern Yemen and Aden. She studied social anthropology at the University of Edinburgh, the London School of Economics and the University of Helsinki, first travelled to Aden in 1982, and has done ethnographic fieldwork in southern Yemen since the 1980s. Her doctoral dissertation on social dynamics and competing moral frameworks in Aden was published in 2010 by Syracuse University Press. Her research covers the history of shari'a, fiqh and court practice in Aden, gender and family law, and state building and the everyday state in Yemen.
Career Timeline
- 1980s–Ethnographic fieldwork and research in Aden, southern Yemen
- 2000sAcademy of Finland research fellow, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
- 2000sGuest researcher, Netherlands Institute for the Near East (NVIC), Leiden University
- Senior Lecturer in Social Anthropology, Tampere University
- Adjunct Professor (Docent), University of Helsinki
- 2023–2026Director, Finnish Institute in the Middle East (from 1 June 2023, relocating to Beirut)