Research topics are often born out of the unfinished business of previous research, and this is exactly what happened to Hanna Snellman. In her doctoral thesis she examined logging in Kemijoki river valley in northern Finland as a kind of an epoch: the forest industry created jobs that dealt with harvesting and transporting raw material for the forest industry in an area where there weren't enough people to do all the work.

Ethnology as an academic discipline originated as a national project, and ‘national’ was the key word in the arguments made to the decision-makers in the newly independent state. The chair in ethnology was founded in 1921 in honour of Finland’s independence. However, the professorship was more than supranational in scope: until the twenty-first century it bore the title ‘Professor of Finno-Ugric Ethnology’.

Even though there is a strong individualist ethos in ethnology, from the outset I have preferred to do my research work in a multidisciplinary setting. I found natural collaborators for my research on Swedish-Finnish culture in history.

Hanna Snellman was elected vice dean of the Faculty of Arts for the years 2014-2017. During the academic year 2014-2015 Snellman is serving as the acting dean. As vice dean, Snellman's responsibilities include research matters, social interaction, international affairs, matters of equality and bilingual matters. She serves as the president…

For the first 20 years of my life I lived above my father’s workplace, the Kemijoki River Driving Association office. Between the ages of fourteen and twenty I had a summer job in that very same office working on the radio telephones. My task was to monitor the course of…

I always knew that I wanted to study at the University of Helsinki, but I never planned a career in research. When Juhani U.E. Lehtonen, my predecessor and the Professor of Ethnology, asked me to become an assistant during the final stages of my studies, he said that the work would include postgraduate studies. When we discussed the subject of my dissertation, I proposed doing research on river driving on the Kemijoki river.

A career in research is not easy. If I could go back in time and decide whether to choose a career in research or one in a museum, which was my original plan, I do not know what I would do. I have never been out of work during my research career, but I have come very close.