Tuomas Heikkilä has considered it a matter of honour to research themes that are as different as possible. This is apparent in the fact he is a docent in three disciplines: general history, Finnish history and church history. Geographically, his research has stretched from the Nordic countries to Rome and from France to Germany, chronographically from late Antiquity until the 19th century.

From 2013, Tuomas Heikkilä has led Finland’s oldest academic institute abroad at the Villa Lante in Rome, where his research group’s theme is time. On the one hand, it is a question of who governs time and thus people’s use of time, how time is structured, how it is used and how it was seen in medieval and Renaissance Rome. On the other hand, the project is crystallized around calendars, whose content allows access to the worldviews of the communities who maintained them in a way that no other type of source can: calendars are lists of things that a community does not want to forget.

From 2005, Tuomas Heikkilä and Associate Professor of Computer Science Teemu Roos have led a research group to develop new computer-assisted tools tailored for the needs of humanities scholars.

In the mind of the general public, Tuomas Heikkilä’s name is associated with St Henry and Lalli. A decade ago the results of a young researcher caused a media sensation: the universally known person of St Henry could not be directly linked to a historical figure. Because Finns’ beloved Lalli, St Henry’s nemesis and enfant terrible of Köyliö, also disappeared from the pages of history books, the stir also made it onto the front page of the newspaper Helsingin Sanomat in the form of a spoof death-threat and an invitation to travel to Köyliö to resolve the matter.

Researching the legend of St Henry enticed Tuomas Heikkilä to study Finland’s earliest literary culture also in greater breadth. Between 2007 and 2010, he led the research project Kirjallinen kulttuuri keskiajan Suomessa (‘Literary culture in medieval Finland’), under the auspices of which was produced the first detailed, over-arching picture of Finland’s oldest book and literary culture.

Universities are the home of every thinking person. For Tuomas Heikkilä and his family this is also true in a literal sense, as in 2006 he was invited to be the resident of the University of Helsinki’s Tiedemies-kunniakoti (‘Honorary scholarly home’). This is an apartment left to the university in the will of Professor Ernst Nevanlinna and his wife Ines Nevanlinna in 1963. In accordance with the rules stipulated in the will, the University invites the most deserving academic, a person who provides something truly new and progressive to their scientific discipline, to be the occupant of the apartment.

The University of Helsinki Faculty of Philosophy Conferment Ceremony is the greatest party in Finland, alongside which invitations to the Presidential Palace and other such lesser get-togethers pale into insignificance. It is also the most traditional national celebration, as the first was arranged in 1643. I have had the pleasure of participating in an official capacity in two conferment ceremonies.