Roosa Rytkönen

Project title: "Doubt as a way to truth": climate change scientists, environmental activists and politics of knowledge in Western Siberia

My PhD explores questions of knowledge among natural scientists and environmental activists in Western Siberia. The project sets out to study the diverse ways in which my interlocutors navigate the heterogenous and complex informational environment they are faced with. The thesis brings together topics such as anthropogenic climate change, Covid-19 pandemic, the national waste reform and Russian constitutional referendum to convey a larger picture of knowledge in a certain time and geographic location. However, the thesis also goes beyond the specificities of its ethnographic context to address a question definitive of our time: how is truth constructed when all authoritative truth claims are mediated?

- Faculty MA Thesis Award 2016 (‘Term Papers and Dissertations for sale! Valuing Action and Relations in Russian Higher Education’), Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki)

- Best MA Thesis 2016, Finnish Anthropological Association

- Best MA Thesis in Russian and East European Studies 2016, Finnish Association for Russian and East European Studies