Mikko Äijälä

Dr. Mikko Äijälä is a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Lapland, Finland. He holds a PhD from University of Lapland, with a doctoral thesis examining human–sled dog–landscape relations. His research interests lie mainly in the area of human-animal studies, particularly human-animal-landscape relations and the role that other species play in shaping, using, and producing these environments. Until his employment in the CoE, he was working in the Research Council of Finland funded project Bringing institutional virtues into governance: Integrating the scientific, indigenous, and local knowing in Teno river salmon policy and administration (DEATNU), where he focused on Sámi ways of knowing and managing salmon fishing, and how the Sámi ways of knowing can be better integrated into government-driven salmon governance at the Teno River fishery. Currently, he continues to work around some of these themes, while mainly focusing on how diverse spatial and temporal scales regulate human-animal encounters and embedded conceptions of justice in Indigenous subsistence activities, particularly hunting, during different seasons.