Legal anthropologist by training, Reetta Toivanen (PhD 2000 Humboldt University in Berlin) is since 2018 full professor in Sustainability Science at the Helsinki Institute for Sustainability Science (HELSUS) and Department of Cultures at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is also a docent in social and cultural anthropology. Reetta Toivanen is the vice-director of the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives (EuroStrorie) funded by the Academy of Finland (2018-2025) leading the Subproject Migration and the narratives of Europe as an “Area of freedom, security and justice”. She is a non-resident senior research fellow at the European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI) in Flensburg (Germany). From 2023 until 2025, she is a member of the Finnish Government’s Expert Panel on Sustainability. Since 2014, she has been an independent expert member in respect of Finland in the Council of Europe’s Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI), she is currently the First Vice President.
Her recent publications include: “Legal Anthropology”. In M. Lindroth, H. Sinevaara-Niskanen, & M. Tennberg (Eds.), Critical Studies of the Arctic: Unravelling the North. Palgrave Macmillan. (2023); “Protecting Indigenous identities? An example of cultural expertise on Sámi identity”. Legal pluralism and Critical Social Analysis, 54(2-3) (2023); “Narratives on ‘refugee knowledge’ in the institutions of Europe” (with B. Bergholm). In M. Kmak, & H. Björklund (Eds.), Refugees and Knowledge Production: Europe's Past and Present, Routledge (2022), and Krieg C. & Toivanen R. (eds.) 2021. Situating Sustainability: A Handbook of Contexts and Concepts. Helsinki: Helsinki University Press.