Person

Mitra Härkönen

Former team member

Mitra Härkönen is a post-doctoral researcher with a master’s degree (M.Soc.Sc.) in Social and Cultural Anthropology and a doctorate degree (Ph.D.) in the Study of Religions. Her research interests and expertise range from Buddhist and Tibetan studies to gender and migration studies. Her PhD dissertation investigated the status of Tibetan nuns living in India and Tibet in the intersections of their female gender, nationality and Buddhist religion. In her postdoctoral projects, she studied (immigrant) Buddhists as well as Thai women living in Finland. Härkönen is specialized in ethnographic research and has conducted fieldwork in Tibet, China, India and Finland.

In AspirE, she has been mainly involved on WP3 and WP4. She collected data on Thai people who contribute to the primary food production sector in Finland by working, for instance, as seasonal workers in the wild-berry industry or independently picking and selling natural products (e.g., berries and mushrooms), or who are employed in the agricultural berry and vegetable production. Active from the start of AspirE, she has left the project on 31/08/2023 for a grant awarded by the Academy of Finland.