Venla Oikkonen
Biographic Data
| ID | 256896 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Venla Oikkonen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Venla |
| FAMILY NAME | Oikkonen |
| SIGNATURE | OIKKONEN V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Tampere University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8613-0428 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 22 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 20 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 22 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Enacting gendered pathologies: Diffraction in medical practices of treating endometriosis and infertility
Medical technologies such as ultrasound or MRI scans and manual techniques such as palpation and pelvic exams are used in clinical practice to visualise the inner spaces of the body and to evaluate the emergence of pathological changes. This study explores how the boundary between the normal and the pathological is enacted in the case of the human reproductive system. We juxtapose two overlapping gendered conditions – endometriosis and infertilit…
Hormones, culture and puberty: How clinicians (don't) see gender in persistent pediatric pain
Medical literature suggests that girls are affected by persistent pain disproportionately to boys especially following the onset of puberty. This article turns attention to how clinicians treating pediatric pain patients conceptualize the role of sex/gender in persistent pain and its care. Drawing on in-depth interviews with members of interdisciplinary pediatric pain care teams in Finland, we argue that sex/gender is an elusive object of alterna…
Navigating Pharmaceutical Effects: Experiences of Hormonal Medications in Endometriosis
Endometriosis is a chronic illness often treated with hormonal products, such as oral contraceptives or hormonal IUDs. As many hormonal products have side effects, and both side effects and effectiveness can be unpredictable, people with endometriosis try to find, often through trial and error, a medication that is tolerable yet effective. Drawing on interview and story data collected in Finland, the article explores how people with endometriosis…
Chronic pain across clinical settings: The changing understanding of pain and its treatment in endometriosis
An ongoing shift toward multidisciplinary pain care and growing emphasis on non-pharmaceutical treatment are reshaping the parameters of how chronic pain is assessed and treated. The article explores these ongoing changes through a chronic gynecological illness, endometriosis. Drawing on interviews with clinicians, people with endometriosis and endometriosis activists in Finland, we ask how pain is understood and its treatment envisioned in cases…
Menopause and Endometriosis: Tracing the Entanglements of Hormones, Ageing and Gendered Chronic Illness
The article explores menopause as a feminist question through a chronic gynaecological illness: endometriosis. As endometriosis is an oestrogen-associated condition, menopause is expected to alleviate endometriosis symptoms, yet its unfolding effects are unknown. Drawing on interviews with clinicians and people with endometriosis in Finland, as well as ethnographic observation at an endometriosis clinic, we show that endometriosis sheds crucial l…
Self-tracking in endometriosis: Evolving expectations around a gynecological app developed by a Finnish patient organization
The article examines the possibilities and limits of patient advocacy-led health technology design through a case study: a non-commercial mobile self-tracking app developed by a Finnish patient organization to advance medical care and research in endometriosis, an underfunded and understudied gynecological condition. Drawing on interviews with patient organization representatives, specialized clinicians and people with endometriosis, as well as w…
Entangled Illnesses: Embodied Experiences of Managing Multimorbidity
Multimorbidity, meaning multiple long-term conditions impacting a person's health, has become a rising societal and public health issue. The article contributes to the sociological study of chronic illness and multimorbidity by analysing how the blurriness of illnesses and entanglement of symptoms in multimorbidity is experienced and negotiated by people with coexisting chronic conditions. Drawing on qualitative interviews with people who live wi…
Anticipating Immunity: Vaccine-induced Immunity and Vaccine Safety in the Finnish News Coverage of Covid-19 Vaccines
In this article I draw on the concept of anticipation to examine Finnish news discourse on the development, licensing and administration of COVID-19 vaccines. I explore the interplay of anticipation of vaccine-induced immunity and vaccine safety concerns, and trace how ideas of protection and risk were invoked in relation to specific vaccine technologies as well as different accounts of biomedical pasts, including cases of narcolepsy associated w…
Sensing pain: Embodied knowledge in endometriosis
The article explores how sensations of pain are turned into embodied knowledge in endometriosis, a chronic gynaecological illness characterized by persistent, possibly paralysing pain. While previous studies have shown how people with endometriosis struggle to achieve accurate diagnosis and effective treatment, we examine the ways in which some of these difficulties are rooted in the complexities of embodied experiences of endometriosis pain and …
The Processuality of 'Sex' in Biomedicine: Exploring Stem Cell Research, Cancer Medicine and Vaccine Safety Research
Incorporating sex into biomedical research is envisioned as key to addressing inequalities in health. However, feminist research suggests that it is a complicated task. This is, we argue, especially the case with research that seeks to mobilise sex across different scales involving bodies, samples and populations to provide a basis for personalised biomedical prevention and treatment. Through case studies from stem cell research, cancer medicine …
Living with acuteness in chronic illness: The temporal underpinnings of endometriosis
This article explores how acuteness is experienced by people with endometriosis in Finland. Drawing on in-depth interviews as well as anonymous written endometriosis stories, we trace instances when the sense of chronicity and cyclicality of endometriosis is disrupted by a possibility of risk to life. These instances include when endometriosis tissue grows in unanticipated and aggressive ways, when medical interventions lead to unexpected complic…
The 2009 H1N1 pandemic, vaccine-associated narcolepsy, and the politics of risk and harm
The article traces the emergence of a new type of vaccine injury-vaccine-associated narcolepsy-following immunization with Pandemrix vaccine during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in Europe. The article highlights the processual nature of vaccine injury: it shows how vaccine-associated narcolepsy emerges gradually as a recognized object through epidemiological and immunological studies as well as patient organizations' public discourses. The article argue…
Gender, Ethology, and Evolution
Ethology is a field of biology that studies animal behavior across species, including humans. Understood in a broad sense, ethology also covers approaches such as sociobiology, which emerged from ethology. Gender and sexuality have a central role in the ethological literature, which often links evolutionarily adaptive behaviors to mating strategies and a gendered division of work. While researchers across the natural and social sciences have emph…
Introduction: Self-Tracking, Embodied Differences, and Intersectionality
This introduction to the Special Section “Self-Tracking, Embodied Differences, and the Politics and Ethics of Health” situates self-tracking technologies and practices within the contexts of neoliberalism, gendered and racialized health inequalities, and questions of social justice. It argues that intersectional STS analyses are needed to address the complex ways in which self-tracking technologies draw on, and may reinforce, colonial and raciali…
Conceptualizing histories of multispecies entanglements: Ancient pathogen genomics and the case of Borrelia recurrentis
This article explores the conceptual and cultural implications of using pathogen ancient DNA (aDNA) collected in archaeological contexts to understand the past. More specifically, it examines ancient pathogen genomics as a way of conceptualizing multispecies entanglements. The analysis focuses on the 2018 sequencing of Borrelia recurrentis bacteria retrieved from a medieval graveyard in Oslo, Norway. B. recurrentis is associated with louse-borne …
Embodied material encounters and the ambiguous promise of biomedical futures: The case of biologically derived medicines
Therapies and prophylactics using biologically derived materials such as cells, microbes or tissues are often portrayed as key to increased future health. This article investigates the material preconditions of such visions. Building on feminist new materialist approaches, it explores the embodied material encounters between biologicals administered into living bodies and the vibrant materiality of the body. We investigate embodied material encou…
Entanglements of Time, Temperature, Technology, and Place in Ancient DNA Research: The Case of the Denisovan Hominin
The study of ancient DNA (aDNA) has gained increasing attention in science and society as a tool for tracing hominin evolution. While aDNA research overlaps with the history of population genetics, it embodies a specific configuration of technology, temporality, temperature, and place that, this article suggests, cannot be fully unpacked with existing science and technology studies approaches to population genetics. This article explores this con…
Affect, technoscience and textual analysis: Interrogating the affective dynamics of the Zika epidemic through media texts
Science and Technology Studies has become increasingly interested in the roles of affect and emotions in science and technology. Researchers have examined, for example, emotions in the production of scientific knowledge, patients’ or users’ affective experiences of technologies, and emotionally charged cultural representations of science. However, less attention has been paid to the underlying affective dynamics that connect these sites, experien…
The politics of becoming different: Rethinking evolution through population genetics
Recent 'new materialist' readings of evolution by such feminists as Elizabeth Grosz, Claire Colebrook, Luciana Parisi, Susan Oyama and Myra Hird have provided important insights on the openness of evolutionary processes and the emergence of difference by focusing on evolution as a temporal dynamic. Building on Darwin's observations on geographical variation, this article highlights the importance of viewing evolution as not only temporal but also…
Mitochondrial Eve and the Affective Politics of Human Ancestry: Winner of the 2015 Catharine Stimpson Prize for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship
This article explores a scientific technology—mitochondrial analysis—that underlies contemporary technoscientific phenomena such as genetic ancestry tests, ethnic diversity projects, and national genome projects. The article focuses on the figure of “Mitochondrial Eve,” the most recent common matrilineal ancestor of modern humans, who lived in Africa a few hundred thousand years ago. Introduced by Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Wilson in…
Narrative analysis as a feminist method: The case of genetic ancestry tests
This article contributes to discussions of methodology in gender studies by examining narrative analysis as a feminist method. Using direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry services as a case study, the author discusses the potential of narrative analysis in interrogating complex cultural phenomena. The analysis focuses on the commercial website of the UK-based genetics company Oxford Ancestors, which the author situates at the intersection of the cu…
Narrating Descent: Popular Science, Evolutionary Theory and Gender Politics
This article examines a narrative dilemma that popular texts on evolution face. On the one hand, popular science tends to privilege linear and culturally familiar narrative structures, as previous studies of popularization have often emphasized. On the other hand, however, the Darwinian idea of natural selection resists linear narration, as narrative theorist H. Porter Abbott has argued. This resistance arises from the fact that evolution by natu…
Affect, technoscience and textual analysis: Interrogating the affective dynamics of the Zika epidemic through media texts
Science and Technology Studies has become increasingly interested in the roles of affect and emotions in science and technology. Researchers have examined, for example, emotions in the production of scientific knowledge, patients’ or users’ affective experiences of technologies, and emotionally charged cultural representations of science. However, less attention has been paid to the underlying affective dynamics that connect these sites, experien…
Entangled Illnesses: Embodied Experiences of Managing Multimorbidity
Multimorbidity, meaning multiple long-term conditions impacting a person's health, has become a rising societal and public health issue. The article contributes to the sociological study of chronic illness and multimorbidity by analysing how the blurriness of illnesses and entanglement of symptoms in multimorbidity is experienced and negotiated by people with coexisting chronic conditions. Drawing on qualitative interviews with people who live wi…
Sensing pain: Embodied knowledge in endometriosis
The article explores how sensations of pain are turned into embodied knowledge in endometriosis, a chronic gynaecological illness characterized by persistent, possibly paralysing pain. While previous studies have shown how people with endometriosis struggle to achieve accurate diagnosis and effective treatment, we examine the ways in which some of these difficulties are rooted in the complexities of embodied experiences of endometriosis pain and …
Living with acuteness in chronic illness: The temporal underpinnings of endometriosis
This article explores how acuteness is experienced by people with endometriosis in Finland. Drawing on in-depth interviews as well as anonymous written endometriosis stories, we trace instances when the sense of chronicity and cyclicality of endometriosis is disrupted by a possibility of risk to life. These instances include when endometriosis tissue grows in unanticipated and aggressive ways, when medical interventions lead to unexpected complic…
Entanglements of Time, Temperature, Technology, and Place in Ancient DNA Research: The Case of the Denisovan Hominin
The study of ancient DNA (aDNA) has gained increasing attention in science and society as a tool for tracing hominin evolution. While aDNA research overlaps with the history of population genetics, it embodies a specific configuration of technology, temporality, temperature, and place that, this article suggests, cannot be fully unpacked with existing science and technology studies approaches to population genetics. This article explores this con…
Narrative analysis as a feminist method: The case of genetic ancestry tests
This article contributes to discussions of methodology in gender studies by examining narrative analysis as a feminist method. Using direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry services as a case study, the author discusses the potential of narrative analysis in interrogating complex cultural phenomena. The analysis focuses on the commercial website of the UK-based genetics company Oxford Ancestors, which the author situates at the intersection of the cu…
Narrating Descent: Popular Science, Evolutionary Theory and Gender Politics
This article examines a narrative dilemma that popular texts on evolution face. On the one hand, popular science tends to privilege linear and culturally familiar narrative structures, as previous studies of popularization have often emphasized. On the other hand, however, the Darwinian idea of natural selection resists linear narration, as narrative theorist H. Porter Abbott has argued. This resistance arises from the fact that evolution by natu…
The Processuality of 'Sex' in Biomedicine: Exploring Stem Cell Research, Cancer Medicine and Vaccine Safety Research
Incorporating sex into biomedical research is envisioned as key to addressing inequalities in health. However, feminist research suggests that it is a complicated task. This is, we argue, especially the case with research that seeks to mobilise sex across different scales involving bodies, samples and populations to provide a basis for personalised biomedical prevention and treatment. Through case studies from stem cell research, cancer medicine …
The politics of becoming different: Rethinking evolution through population genetics
Recent 'new materialist' readings of evolution by such feminists as Elizabeth Grosz, Claire Colebrook, Luciana Parisi, Susan Oyama and Myra Hird have provided important insights on the openness of evolutionary processes and the emergence of difference by focusing on evolution as a temporal dynamic. Building on Darwin's observations on geographical variation, this article highlights the importance of viewing evolution as not only temporal but also…
Mitochondrial Eve and the Affective Politics of Human Ancestry: Winner of the 2015 Catharine Stimpson Prize for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship
This article explores a scientific technology—mitochondrial analysis—that underlies contemporary technoscientific phenomena such as genetic ancestry tests, ethnic diversity projects, and national genome projects. The article focuses on the figure of “Mitochondrial Eve,” the most recent common matrilineal ancestor of modern humans, who lived in Africa a few hundred thousand years ago. Introduced by Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Wilson in…
Narrating Descent: Popular Science, Evolutionary Theory and Gender Politics
This article examines a narrative dilemma that popular texts on evolution face. On the one hand, popular science tends to privilege linear and culturally familiar narrative structures, as previous studies of popularization have often emphasized. On the other hand, however, the Darwinian idea of natural selection resists linear narration, as narrative theorist H. Porter Abbott has argued. This resistance arises from the fact that evolution by natu…
Narrative analysis as a feminist method: The case of genetic ancestry tests
This article contributes to discussions of methodology in gender studies by examining narrative analysis as a feminist method. Using direct-to-consumer genetic ancestry services as a case study, the author discusses the potential of narrative analysis in interrogating complex cultural phenomena. The analysis focuses on the commercial website of the UK-based genetics company Oxford Ancestors, which the author situates at the intersection of the cu…
The politics of becoming different: Rethinking evolution through population genetics
Recent 'new materialist' readings of evolution by such feminists as Elizabeth Grosz, Claire Colebrook, Luciana Parisi, Susan Oyama and Myra Hird have provided important insights on the openness of evolutionary processes and the emergence of difference by focusing on evolution as a temporal dynamic. Building on Darwin's observations on geographical variation, this article highlights the importance of viewing evolution as not only temporal but also…
Mitochondrial Eve and the Affective Politics of Human Ancestry: Winner of the 2015 Catharine Stimpson Prize for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship
This article explores a scientific technology—mitochondrial analysis—that underlies contemporary technoscientific phenomena such as genetic ancestry tests, ethnic diversity projects, and national genome projects. The article focuses on the figure of “Mitochondrial Eve,” the most recent common matrilineal ancestor of modern humans, who lived in Africa a few hundred thousand years ago. Introduced by Rebecca Cann, Mark Stoneking, and Allan Wilson in…
Affect, technoscience and textual analysis: Interrogating the affective dynamics of the Zika epidemic through media texts
Science and Technology Studies has become increasingly interested in the roles of affect and emotions in science and technology. Researchers have examined, for example, emotions in the production of scientific knowledge, patients’ or users’ affective experiences of technologies, and emotionally charged cultural representations of science. However, less attention has been paid to the underlying affective dynamics that connect these sites, experien…
Embodied material encounters and the ambiguous promise of biomedical futures: The case of biologically derived medicines
Therapies and prophylactics using biologically derived materials such as cells, microbes or tissues are often portrayed as key to increased future health. This article investigates the material preconditions of such visions. Building on feminist new materialist approaches, it explores the embodied material encounters between biologicals administered into living bodies and the vibrant materiality of the body. We investigate embodied material encou…
Entanglements of Time, Temperature, Technology, and Place in Ancient DNA Research: The Case of the Denisovan Hominin
The study of ancient DNA (aDNA) has gained increasing attention in science and society as a tool for tracing hominin evolution. While aDNA research overlaps with the history of population genetics, it embodies a specific configuration of technology, temporality, temperature, and place that, this article suggests, cannot be fully unpacked with existing science and technology studies approaches to population genetics. This article explores this con…
Gender, Ethology, and Evolution
Ethology is a field of biology that studies animal behavior across species, including humans. Understood in a broad sense, ethology also covers approaches such as sociobiology, which emerged from ethology. Gender and sexuality have a central role in the ethological literature, which often links evolutionarily adaptive behaviors to mating strategies and a gendered division of work. While researchers across the natural and social sciences have emph…
Introduction: Self-Tracking, Embodied Differences, and Intersectionality
This introduction to the Special Section “Self-Tracking, Embodied Differences, and the Politics and Ethics of Health” situates self-tracking technologies and practices within the contexts of neoliberalism, gendered and racialized health inequalities, and questions of social justice. It argues that intersectional STS analyses are needed to address the complex ways in which self-tracking technologies draw on, and may reinforce, colonial and raciali…
Conceptualizing histories of multispecies entanglements: Ancient pathogen genomics and the case of Borrelia recurrentis
This article explores the conceptual and cultural implications of using pathogen ancient DNA (aDNA) collected in archaeological contexts to understand the past. More specifically, it examines ancient pathogen genomics as a way of conceptualizing multispecies entanglements. The analysis focuses on the 2018 sequencing of Borrelia recurrentis bacteria retrieved from a medieval graveyard in Oslo, Norway. B. recurrentis is associated with louse-borne …
The 2009 H1N1 pandemic, vaccine-associated narcolepsy, and the politics of risk and harm
The article traces the emergence of a new type of vaccine injury-vaccine-associated narcolepsy-following immunization with Pandemrix vaccine during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic in Europe. The article highlights the processual nature of vaccine injury: it shows how vaccine-associated narcolepsy emerges gradually as a recognized object through epidemiological and immunological studies as well as patient organizations' public discourses. The article argue…
Anticipating Immunity: Vaccine-induced Immunity and Vaccine Safety in the Finnish News Coverage of Covid-19 Vaccines
In this article I draw on the concept of anticipation to examine Finnish news discourse on the development, licensing and administration of COVID-19 vaccines. I explore the interplay of anticipation of vaccine-induced immunity and vaccine safety concerns, and trace how ideas of protection and risk were invoked in relation to specific vaccine technologies as well as different accounts of biomedical pasts, including cases of narcolepsy associated w…
Sensing pain: Embodied knowledge in endometriosis
The article explores how sensations of pain are turned into embodied knowledge in endometriosis, a chronic gynaecological illness characterized by persistent, possibly paralysing pain. While previous studies have shown how people with endometriosis struggle to achieve accurate diagnosis and effective treatment, we examine the ways in which some of these difficulties are rooted in the complexities of embodied experiences of endometriosis pain and …
The Processuality of 'Sex' in Biomedicine: Exploring Stem Cell Research, Cancer Medicine and Vaccine Safety Research
Incorporating sex into biomedical research is envisioned as key to addressing inequalities in health. However, feminist research suggests that it is a complicated task. This is, we argue, especially the case with research that seeks to mobilise sex across different scales involving bodies, samples and populations to provide a basis for personalised biomedical prevention and treatment. Through case studies from stem cell research, cancer medicine …
Living with acuteness in chronic illness: The temporal underpinnings of endometriosis
This article explores how acuteness is experienced by people with endometriosis in Finland. Drawing on in-depth interviews as well as anonymous written endometriosis stories, we trace instances when the sense of chronicity and cyclicality of endometriosis is disrupted by a possibility of risk to life. These instances include when endometriosis tissue grows in unanticipated and aggressive ways, when medical interventions lead to unexpected complic…
Navigating Pharmaceutical Effects: Experiences of Hormonal Medications in Endometriosis
Endometriosis is a chronic illness often treated with hormonal products, such as oral contraceptives or hormonal IUDs. As many hormonal products have side effects, and both side effects and effectiveness can be unpredictable, people with endometriosis try to find, often through trial and error, a medication that is tolerable yet effective. Drawing on interview and story data collected in Finland, the article explores how people with endometriosis…
Chronic pain across clinical settings: The changing understanding of pain and its treatment in endometriosis
An ongoing shift toward multidisciplinary pain care and growing emphasis on non-pharmaceutical treatment are reshaping the parameters of how chronic pain is assessed and treated. The article explores these ongoing changes through a chronic gynecological illness, endometriosis. Drawing on interviews with clinicians, people with endometriosis and endometriosis activists in Finland, we ask how pain is understood and its treatment envisioned in cases…
Menopause and Endometriosis: Tracing the Entanglements of Hormones, Ageing and Gendered Chronic Illness
The article explores menopause as a feminist question through a chronic gynaecological illness: endometriosis. As endometriosis is an oestrogen-associated condition, menopause is expected to alleviate endometriosis symptoms, yet its unfolding effects are unknown. Drawing on interviews with clinicians and people with endometriosis in Finland, as well as ethnographic observation at an endometriosis clinic, we show that endometriosis sheds crucial l…
Self-tracking in endometriosis: Evolving expectations around a gynecological app developed by a Finnish patient organization
The article examines the possibilities and limits of patient advocacy-led health technology design through a case study: a non-commercial mobile self-tracking app developed by a Finnish patient organization to advance medical care and research in endometriosis, an underfunded and understudied gynecological condition. Drawing on interviews with patient organization representatives, specialized clinicians and people with endometriosis, as well as w…
Entangled Illnesses: Embodied Experiences of Managing Multimorbidity
Multimorbidity, meaning multiple long-term conditions impacting a person's health, has become a rising societal and public health issue. The article contributes to the sociological study of chronic illness and multimorbidity by analysing how the blurriness of illnesses and entanglement of symptoms in multimorbidity is experienced and negotiated by people with coexisting chronic conditions. Drawing on qualitative interviews with people who live wi…
Enacting gendered pathologies: Diffraction in medical practices of treating endometriosis and infertility
Medical technologies such as ultrasound or MRI scans and manual techniques such as palpation and pelvic exams are used in clinical practice to visualise the inner spaces of the body and to evaluate the emergence of pathological changes. This study explores how the boundary between the normal and the pathological is enacted in the case of the human reproductive system. We juxtapose two overlapping gendered conditions – endometriosis and infertilit…
Hormones, culture and puberty: How clinicians (don't) see gender in persistent pediatric pain
Medical literature suggests that girls are affected by persistent pain disproportionately to boys especially following the onset of puberty. This article turns attention to how clinicians treating pediatric pain patients conceptualize the role of sex/gender in persistent pain and its care. Drawing on in-depth interviews with members of interdisciplinary pediatric pain care teams in Finland, we argue that sex/gender is an elusive object of alterna…
Sociology (12 works) · Epistemology (9 works) · Medicine (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Psychology (8 works) · Endometriosis (7 works) · Biology (6 works) · Endometriosis Research and Treatment (6 works) · Anthropology (5 works)