Hellsten is a Doctor in Systematic Theology from Åbo Akademi University. Her first Master's was in Education, from Oulu University and her second Master's was in Theology from Åbo Akademi. She has lived and studied in Brazil, Portugal, Sweden and the US. Currently, she is placed in the archipelago of the Åland Islands where she lives with her cat Moses on Kökar.

She published her dissertation Through the Bone and Marrow: Re-examining Theological Encounters with Dance in Medieval Europe with Brepols in 2021. In her first post-doctoral position Hellsten did ethnographic fieldwork on Ethics and Science Communication in the Stiftelsen Åbo Akademi funded Centre of Excellence BACE. BACE is a collaboration centered on developing a platform for bioelectronic activation that enables the control of cell signals and, thereby, the stimulation of cell functions. To investigate the aspect of science communication, Hellsten developed and led the research project Avtryck i det okända - Forcing the Impossible, which created collaborations between artists and researchers in the broader context of Åbo Akademi. Hellsten is currently writing a book on the challenges and possibilities of cross-disciplinary research, particularly on how theology may create fruitful collaborations with natural science projects when engaging with the arts.

In her post-doctoral position at the Polin Institute, Hellsten leads the project The Praxis of Social Imaginaries - a Theo-artistic Intervention for Transdisciplinary Research. This project was piloted in collaboration with the Nordic Summer University study circle The Praxis of Social Imaginaries. Cosmologies, Othering and Liminality, which Hellsten co-hosts together with historian and dance researcher Lindsey Drury (PhD, Freie Universität Berlin/ University of Kent) from 2023 to 2025. The symposia created by the project also function as a course on masters and doctoral level, that can be taken by students from any field of study interested in transdisciplinary learning.

The Praxis of Social Imaginaries - a Theo-artistic Intervention for Transdisciplinary Research project aims to create a platform for transdisciplinary research collaborations that simultaneously train scholars in science communication and investigate the relationship between praxis and social imaginaries in reading medieval travel accounts while critically inquiring about histories of othering and racialisation. The project was enabled by the Nordic Summer University's winter and summer symposia, where artists and activists join scholars in co-creating knowledge and artistic performances. From the summer of 2025, the project will work more closely together with the new Centre of Excellence: Sustainable Ocean Sciences (SOS) at Åbo Akademi Foundation. In that collaboration philosopher and artistic researcher Eduardo Abrantes (PhD, Roskilde University), works with questions of migration of knowledge between the past and present and different research fields. Furthermore, theologian Shilulina Jamir (India) collaborates with us in the inquiries we do into creating theo-artistic interventions that are open to Indigenous epistemologies.