I am a postdoctoral researcher at Åbo Akademi University working within the project MixMed. Mixtures and Medicine: Recipes as Medical Knowledge Transfer, 1700–1850.

Previously, I was employed as a doctoral researcher in Nordic History at Åbo Akademi University. I defended my doctoral dissertation in January 2026. In my dissertation, I examine how the social elite approached health and illness during the long nineteenth century in Finland and partly Sweden. My work shows how elite families managed issues related to health and illness and how these concerns shaped their lives and everyday practices. Through a long-term perspective, I also demonstrate the changes that occurred in these families’ so-called health culture and in the medical knowledge they cultivated and shared within their networks.

My research is primarily based on extensive family correspondence and, to some extent, diary materials from the late eighteenth to the late nineteenth century. This allows me to adopt a patient-oriented perspective. In other words, I examine family members’ own descriptions of illness and health, from childhood to old age, and include both men and women in the analysis.

My research moves away from the traditional focus on professional medicine and instead centres on people’s experiences and perceptions of health and illness. How did the social elite understand a healthy life? How did they manage illness and the risks of disease? Through my research, I hope to contribute not only to the field of medical history but also to cultural history by offering a deeper understanding of how people’s lives, routines, and everyday practices could be shaped by ideas about health and by the desire to avoid illness.

In my research I am also interested in the history of emotions, perceptions of old age and childhood, and questions of family and identity formation within elite families during the nineteenth century.