Mikko Toivanen
Academy Research Fellow
PhD, global and environmental history
Department of Geographical and Historical Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies
I am a historian of modern imperialism and colonial Southeast Asia. My current project, Trees and the travels of knowledge: making modern (trans)imperial forestry from the margins, 1917–1939, funded by the Research Council of Finland, runs 2026–2030. The project examines the transimperial networks of forestry sciences between Europe and Asia and the efforts of Finnish forestry professionals to gain a foothold on the global stage. My previous research has dealt with the development of colonial urbanism in Southeast Asia and the cultures of travel in the nineteenth-century Indian Ocean region. I also have a longstanding interest in the participation of Nordic actors in the networks of global imperialism.
My research monograph Empire, Tourism, and Colonial Knowledge in Nineteenth-Century Southeast Asia and Sri Lanka was published by Leiden University Press in September 2025. I am also a co-editor, with Bernhard C. Schär, of the volume Integration and Collaborative Imperialism in Modern Europe: At the Margins of Empire, 1800–1950 (Bloomsbury Academic, 2025). My articles have appeared in numerous international journals, including the Historical Journal, Urban History and the Journal of Imperial and Commonwealth History.
I am also a Strategy Group member of the NordGlob network of Nordic global historians.
