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The Conferment Ceremony is organised by a Conferment Committee composed of volunteer students graduating as Masters and Doctors, led by the gratisti. The responsibilities of the Committee are further divided into smaller areas of responsibility.
Members of the Committee:
Jyrki Rantanen, gratisti (chairperson)
Katja Laine, vice chair
Linda-Liisa Kelokari, vice chair
Laura Wathén
Marguerite Beattie
Olli Castrén
Suvi Sainio
Tommi Ostrovskij
Pasi Pykälistö
Sarah Green is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki. Before joining Helsinki in 2012, she also worked at the Universities of Cambridge and Manchester. She has held a range of positions at Helsinki, including director of the doctoral program in the social sciences, director of the undergraduate degree in Society and Change, and steering group member of Helsinki One Health and Una Europa One Health.
Her research focuses on the anthropology of borders and location, which in recent years has focused on changes in the borders between people and other living things, particularly animals, but also microbes and plants. Her regional focus is Europe (both as a concept and as a place), with a special interest in the Mediterranean region. She has published widely on these topics, and is currently an Academy Professor with the Research Council of Finland, for which she is looking into changes in how animals are transgressing people’s spaces and how people are transgressing animals’ spaces in the European context.
Juhana Aunesluoma is Professor of Political History at the University of Helsinki. He has served in various positions in the Faculty of Social Sciences since 2000. He received his doctorate from the University of Oxford in 1998, where he was a visiting academic in 2023. In 2025-17 he was a visiting professor in the University of Minnesota, where he taught European history and politics.
Aunesluoma’s research interests are the study of foreign policy decision-making, the use of historical narratives in diplomacy and the connection of economic statecraft with geopolitics. He has published and edited several works on the Nordic countries in the Cold War, the history of neutrality in international politics, international trade diplomacy, Finnish foreign and defence policy, and business history.
Minna van Gerven is Professor of Social Policy at the University of Helsinki. She received her doctorate from Tilburg University in the Netherlands in 2008. After holding academic positions at several Dutch universities—including Tilburg, Amsterdam, and Twente—she returned to Finland in 2020 and has since served as Professor of Social Policy at the Universities of Tampere (2022-2023) and Helsinki. Professor van Gerven’s research interests span a wide range of social policy fields, with a particular focus on the design and implementation of social policies and comparative welfare state analysis.
Her current research centers on the digitalization and datafication of social policy and the implications of technological change for welfare states. She has published extensively in leading international, peer-reviewed journals in social policy and public administration on topics ranging from welfare state reform and social protection to the datafication of public services.
Conferment Coordinator: Riikka Pasanen
Conferment Trainee: Elsa Lindeberg
Event Producer responsible for Honorary Doctors: Elina Tammisto
Protocol Adviser: Juha Hurme
Controller: Hanna Valtonen