Maarit has been teaching Anthropology at the University of Helsinki since 2022. In 2009-2020 she was a Senior Lecturer at the University of the West Indies and before that, a Research Associate at Newcastle University in 2007-2009. Maarit’s anthropological interests revolve around politics, inequality, religion, health, migration, and colonialism, and she develops multimodal and decolonial methods in her teaching and research. She has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in the Caribbean and its diaspora since 1996. Her publications include Passages and Afterworlds: Anthropological Perspectives on Death in the Caribbean (Duke University Press, 2018) and Obeah and Other Powers: The Politics of Caribbean Religion and Healing (Duke University Press, 2012). Maarit is working on a monograph on everyday politics in an impoverished neighbourhood in Port of Spain and a multidisciplinary project on planetary health.
Florence is an anthropologist with experience in carrying out ethnographic research in marginal spaces of society (South Africa and Zimbabwe). She is based at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa and holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of the Western Cape. Her research areas include migration, critical military and security studies, social inequality and urban marginalization. A central theme in her work is a concern with the state-margins interactions and the relations they engender. Florence’s postdoctoral research project ‘Mutoriro wazotiita Mufakose Chaiwo’: Crystal meth and the holistic deadening of youths in Mufakose Township in Harare, Zimbabwe investigates the ways in which substance use ‘deadens’ aspirations, ambitions, hope and lives in this poor community. She uses participant narratives, art and photo-voice as creative methods that not only defy the confining positivist linear processes of scientific research but also allow her to recognize and illuminate the realities and epistemologies of African people living in marginalized poor communities in Mufakose with a view to solve real world problems. This approach is essential to developing a more engaged anthropology which transcends the university setting.
Amílcar Peter Sanatan is an interdisciplinary Caribbean artist, educator and activist. He is currently finalising his PhD thesis on gender and urban development in Cultural Studies at the University of the West Indies in Trinidad and Tobago. Amílcar’s public leadership and research amplify gender equality and youth mainstreaming in policy, finance and community development, transforming men and masculinities, literary and performing arts, and human geography in the Caribbean and Americas. Amílcar holds a BSc. Psychology and MPhil. Interdisciplinary Gender Studies from The University of the West Indies.
Saana Hansen is a social anthropologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on displacement and migration, colonial and postcolonial child removals, the anthropology of the state and documents, transitional justice and reparations, as well as care and kinship. Her ethnographic focus is in Northern Europe (Denmark, Greenland) and Southern Africa (South Africa, Zimbabwe). In 2023, Saana earned her PhD with distinction in Social and Cultural Anthropology from the University of Helsinki with a dissertation titled Economies of care and politics of return: Sustaining life among injivas and their families in Bulawayo. Saana holds a bachelor's degree in Social Anthropology from the University of Tampere and a master’s degree in Anthropology of Development and Social Transformation from the University of Sussex. Before embarking on her academic career, she spent several years working in the NGO and government sectors, focusing on migration management, human rights, and research.