I am in charge of teaching and supervision of theses in the practical theology (Orthodox programme) at the School of Theology. Practical theology combines various themes: liturgical theology, pastoral theology, homiletics, pedagogy of religion and canon law.
My research interests include religious education, marriage, sexual minorities, Orthodoxy in Finland (church relations, lived religion, and liturgical life) and diakonia.
I have studied ethnomusicology and folklore studies at the universities of Helsinki, Gothenburg, Joensuu and Petroszavodsk. Since 1990s I have studied the minority music and cultures as signifying practices and political and aesthetic activities. I have written about Finnish popular music among the Finns in Sweden and contemporary folk music in Petrozavodsk, Russian Karelia. I have conducted research within the contexts of identities, borders, field work, recent history, cultural policies and activities. Recently my studies have been connected with the Karelian language and music as well as Karelian cultural activism.
I am a doctoral researcher specializing in ocular drug delivery and the role of melanin binding. My research focuses on in vitro characterization of drug-melanin interactions to improve therapeutic strategies for diseases affecting the posterior segment of the eye.
My research focusses on the intertwining of literacy, social dimensions of difference and educational inequalities in the context of compulsory education, especially in vocational education and training (VET).
My main interests in research and teaching include folklore and nationalism and the politics of history, heritage and tradition, on the one hand, and ethnopoetics, the textual representation of orality, and the rites of passage theory, on the other.
One of my most notable publications is the recently published Explorations in the Violence of Traditions and Traditions of Violence (FFC 328, Helsinki, The Kalevala Society Foundation, 2025), the articles of which are based on presentations given at the Folklore Fellows Summer School held virtually at the University of Eastern Finland in 2021. Another is Tradition Through Modernity: Postmodernism and the Nation-State in Folklore Scholarship (Helsinki, Finnish Literature Society, 2005), which was published in Greek translation in 2018 and in Chinese translation in early 2026.
On Kalevala Day in 2026 I received the ninth Kalevala Society Award, worth €10,000, which is granted every three years to a person who, through their scientific or artistic work, has made a significant contribution to raising awareness of folk poetry, the Kalevala, or Finnish culture. According to the award criteria, I am currently the most internationally renowned and well-connected Finnish folklorist, and I have also made significant contributions to research into the textualisation of the Kalevala and oral tradition.
Peter Wipf’s research focuses on the total synthesis of natural products, organometallic and heterocyclic chemistry, diversity-oriented synthesis, medicinal chemistry and computational chemistry. At the heart of his research program is the study of chemical reactivity and the use of synthesis to augment the chemical toolbox and investigate new therapeutic strategies. A major emphasis involves the efficient preparation of polyfunctionalized nitrogen-containing building blocks for medicinal chemistry and natural product analog & total synthesis. The discovery of fundamentally new reaction pathways is stimulated by exploratory studies of transition metal complexes, in particular zirconocenes, and strained rings, such as bicyclo[1.1.0]butanes. One of his compounds, a PI-3 kinase inhibitor, progressed into human Phase II clinical trials in the US and Canada, and several others have been licensed by companies. Wipf’s research is highly collaborative, he has worked with dozens of national and international academic and industrial groups, and published joint papers with more than 1,300 co-authors. He has been the Chair of the Safety committee and served as a Chemical Hygiene Officer at the University of Pittsburgh for more than two decades.
Petra Kuivala, Doctor of Theology, works as an Assistant Professor of Global Christianity at the School of Theology, University of Eastern Finland.
Previously, Kuivala has worked as a postdoctoral researcher of Area and Cultural Studies at the Faculty of Art and as a doctoral researcher at the Faculty of Theology, University of Helsinki (2014-2023). In 2020-2023, she held an appointment as a Visiting Scholar and an Associate at the Department of History, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, at Harvard University. In 2016-2017, Kuivala held an appointment as a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the Cuban Research Institute, Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs, at Florida International University. She has received fellowships and research grants from the Academy of Finland, University of Helsinki, the Lutheran World Federation, The Osk. Huttunen Foundation, Finnish Cultural Foundation, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation, Aune Vappula Fund, and The Research Center of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Finland.
Dr. Kuivala’s research and teaching intersect with the study of religion, history, Cuban studies, and Latin American studies, addressing Christianity in the Americas, with a particular focus on religion in Cuba, the Cuban Revolution, and socialist society.
Kuivala’s dissertation (2019), Never a Church of Silence: The Catholic Church in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959-1986, focused on Catholicism in socialist Cuba, drawing on archival and oral sources as well as ethnographic work conducted in Cuba. During the fieldwork for her dissertation, Dr. Kuivala became the first scholar to access previously unstudied archives of the Catholic Church in Cuba, working on classified sources dating to the revolutionary period. In total, she perused more than 40,000 pages of previously unexplored documents in nine Cuban archives.
Most recently, Kuivala has written about religious material culture and lived religion in Cuba, and religious moral authority confronting totalitarian state power in Latin America. Her articles have been published in, among others, Cuban Studies, Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, and the International Journal of Cuban Studies. Kuivala is also the Editor-in-Chief of The Yearbook of the Finnish Society of Church History.
Dr. Kuivala’s most recent research project, The Revolution, Religion, and Social Experience in Cuba, 1961–1991, funded by the Academy of Finland, analyzed the intersections of vernacular religion and lived experience in the social histories of the Cuban Revolution.
I am a professor with special interest to medical diagnostic and treatment technology as well as safety and education. I am also working as a chief physicist at the Diagnostic Imaging Center, Kuopio University Hospital. I have a strong background in musculoskeletal and neurophysiological research as well as training of medical physicists.
Our research laboratories are located at the Kuopio University Hospital (building 1A, 2nd floor). Our neuromodulation research group focuses on developing neurophysiological diagnostics and treatment techniques, as well as novel methodologies for assessment of brain and nerve function, and the connection between muscles and nerves by means of neuromodulation.
