Gross, Toomas, Ph.D.

Gross, Toomas, Ph.D.,
Lecturer, student exchange advisor
Office hour: Wed 16-17; Room E308
Telephone: 191 23085

Toomas Gross holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge (2001). He has done fieldwork in Zapotec villages in Southern Mexico (1998-2000, 2008, 2009), and his main research interests include politics of religion, religious change, new religious movements, Protestant churches in Latin America, and anthropology of religious conversion.

He joined the department in 2003 where he has been teaching various courses mainly on anthropology of religion and Latin America. Before taking up his position in Helsinki, he worked as a post-doctoral research fellow in the Institute for US-Mexican Studies at the University of California, San Diego (2001-02). He has also taught at intervals at the University of Tartu (1994-2003) and at Stockholm School of Economics in Riga (1997-2006). He is currently involved in two research projects: “Religious Change in the Post-Colonial World” (Estonian Science Foundation Project ETF8335, duration 2010-13) and “Dynamic Perspectives of Identity Politics - Analysis of Dialogue and Conflict” (Estonian Ministry of Education and Research, Targeted Financing Project SF0180157s08, duration 2008-13).

Some of his recent publications include:


Gross, T. (2012). Changing Faith: Costs and Consequences of Intra-Christian Conversion.
Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology
(forthcoming)

Gross, T. (2012). Incompatible Worlds? Protestantism and Indigenous Identity in Oaxaca.
Folklore: Electronic Journal of Folklore 50
(forthcoming)

Gross, T. (2011). Divided over Tourism: Zapotec
Responses to Mexico's 'Magical Villages Program.' Anthropological Notebooks. 17:3, xx-xx.

2009. Farewell to Fiestas and Saints? Changing Catholic Practices in Contemporary Rural Oaxaca. Journal of Ethnology and Folkloristics 3:1, 3-19.

2009. Is Protestant Growth Inevitable? Assessing Religious Change in Twenty-First Century Mexico. Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 38:2, 22-43.

2008. Anthropology of Religion. Estonian Literary Magazine 8/9, 641-652.

2007. On the Presentation of Social and Cultural Reality in Anthropology. Vikerkaar 3, 158-165.

2007. “Pueblo Pequeño, Infierno Grande”: Perceptions of Community in Rural Mexico. In Minna Ruckenstein & Marie-Louise Karttunen (eds) On Foreign Ground: Moving between Countries and Categories. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 77-88.

2006. The Other Side of Custom: Reinterpreting usos y costumbres in rural Mexico. Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 31: 3/4, 21-36.

2003. Community and Dissent: Religious Intolerance in Rural Oaxaca. Journal of the Finnish Anthropological Society 28:3, 16-35.

2003. Protestantism and Modernity: The Implications of Religious Change in Rural Oaxaca. Sociology of Religion: A Quarterly Review 64:4, 479-498.