Prof. Em. Laura Assmuth, Ph.D.

Laura Assmuth is Professor Emerita of Social and Public Policy, University of Eastern Finland. She holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology (University of Helsinki) and is Docent in Sociology and Social Anthropology. Her long term research interests are migration and mobility, borders, gender, family, life course, identities, social inequality and peripheral rural areas. On these topics she has published extensively in many languages. Assmuth has conducted ethnographic fieldwork in Southern Italy, Sardinia, Estonia, Latvia, North West Russia, and Eastern Finland. She has led and participated in many international research projects and consortia, for example Inequalities of Mobility: Relatedness and Belonging of Transnational Families in the Nordic Migration Space (TRANSLINES, Academy of Finland, 2015-2019) and Multilayered Borders of Global Security (GLASE, Academy of Finland Strategic Research Council, 2016 2019). In her work and together with her research group members Assmuth has developed and encouraged interdisciplinarity, participatory, visual and art based methods, and collaboration between researchers and artists. She will join the IRTG “Baltic Peripeties” at the University of Greifswald as a Mercator Fellow From October to December 2023 and October 2024 to February 2025.