Simo Laakkonen
Senior Research Fellow, Landscape Studies (University of Turku), Adjunct Professor of Social and Economic History (University of Helsinki)
sijula@utu.fi +358 45 137 7259 Siltapuistokatu 2 Pori |
Environmental history of the Baltic Sea; urban socio-environmental change, oral environmental history, ecology of war, history of winter.
Director of projects involving environmental policy-making, science, technology, and media in the Baltic Sea region.
I studied political history at the University of Helsinki and completed my MSc thesis in 1991 about the emergence of the new labor movement (CUT, PT) which gained political power in Brazil at the end of the 20th century. I continued my studies in social and economic history and defended my PhD thesis in 2001. After that I worked as a researcher of the Academy of Finland, a Lecturer of Environmental Policy at the Department of Environmental Studies in Helsinki and as an (acting) Professor of Environmental Policy at the University of Joensuu in Eastern Finland. I was also a Visiting Fellow at Södertörn University, the University of Stockholm and the University of Kansas. In 2010-2014 I worked as a Senior Lecturer of Landscape Studies at the University of Turku. Currently I am a Senior Reserach Fellow and I steer a new project supported by the Academy of Finland exploring the history of winter in Finland during the industrial era.
My PhD explored the origins of water protection in the City of Helsinki in 1878-1928. This approach was widened in cooperation with scholars representing, for example, folklore, biology, and engineering, and in 2001 we published an edited book entitled Näkökulmia Helsingin ympäristöhistoriaan, Kaupunki ja sen ympäristö 1800- ja 1900-luvulla (Approaches to the environmental history of Helsinki. The city and its environment in the 19th and 20th century (Helsinki: Edita, Helsinki Urban Facts, 274 pp). Helsinki remained long the only city outside North America that has been the subject of an extensive city-specific study in the field of environmental history.
My main research theme is the environmental history of pollution and protection of the Baltic Sea. Hence I have directed national projects in Finland and multidisciplinary projects that have examined urban and national water pollution and protection issues in Russia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Germany, and Nordic Countries over the past century. The main results of these projects have been published in two Special Issues (Laakkonen et al. 2001 and 2007) in Ambio: A Journal of the Human Environment, which is a journal of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Peacetime developments in societies and environment cannot be understood without taking into consideration the impact of war. After coediting with ecologist Timo Vuorisalo our first book in Finnish on this subject, that is, Sodan ekologia. Nykyaikaisen sodankäynnin ympäristöhistoriaa (Ecology of war. Environmental history of modern warfare), (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2007, 775 pp.) I directed also two other projects that provided the first books published on the environmental history of WWII, that is, S. Laakkonen, R. Tucker, T. Vuorisalo (Eds.), The Long Shadows: A Global Environmental History of the Second World War (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2017) and S. Laakkonen, J. R. McNeill, R. Tucker, T. Vuorisalo (Eds.), The Resilient City in World War II: Urban Environmental Histories (New York, London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).
Recently I have directed an international research project funded by the Kone Foundation (2021-2024) that have explored environmental history of water pollution and protection in Finland and Baltic Countries from the end of the 19th century until today.
Currently I am not involved in teaching except supervising some doctoral studies.
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- Environmental Policies of the Third Reich (2017) The Long Shadows: A Global Environmental History of the Second World War Laakkonen S.
- Hypotheses: World War II and Its Shadows (2017) The Long Shadows. A Global Environmental History of the Second World War Simo Laakkonen, Richard P. Tucker, Timo Vuorisalo
- Itämeren tuntematon ympäristöhistoria (2017)
- Vesitalous
- Polemosphere: The war, society, and the environment (2017) The Long Shadows: A Global Environmental History of the Second World War Laakkonen S.
- The Long Shadows: A Global Environmental History of the Second World War (2017) Simo Laakkonen, Richard P. Tucker, Timo Vuorisalo
- The Long Shadows (2017) The Long Shadows. A Global Environmental History of the Second World War Simo Laakkonen, Richard P. Tucker, Timo Vuorisalo
- Environmental nostalgia and discussions of the state of the Finnish environment in the 1950s (2016)
- Journal of Finnish Studies
- Science Diplomacy in the Baltic Sea Region: Beginnings of East-West Cooperation in Marine Protection during the Cold War (2016) Northern Europe in the Cold War: East-West Interactions of Security, Culture, and Technology Simo Laakkonen, Tuomas Räsänen
- Special Section: Militarised Landscapes: Environmental Histories of the Cold War (2016)
- Cold War History
- The Cold War and environmental history: complementary fields (2016)
- Cold War History
- Vides un sociālās ekoloģijas apzināšanās Ventspilī: postpadomju telpas ārvērtības (2014) Ventspils paralēle I-IV Dagmāra Beitnere, Simo Laakkonen
- Waves of Laws and Institutions – The Emergence of National Awareness of Water Pollution and Protection in the Baltic Sea (2014) The Sea of Identities. A Century of Baltic and East European Experiences with Laakkonen Simo
- Asphalt kids and the matrix city: Reminiscences of childen's urban environmental history (2011)
- Urban History
- From a Baltic village to a leading Soviet health resort: Reminiscences of the social history of Jurmala, Latvia (2011) Resorts and Ports: European Seaside Towns since 1700 Simo Laakkonen, Karina Vasilevska
- Sota tuhoaa ympäristöä (2011) Ihminen ja ympäristö Simo Laakkonen
- Beauty on the water? Two turning points in Stockholm’s water-protection policy (2010) A Living City. An anthology of urban environmental history Laakkonen S, Thelin S
- Meri kulttuurin ristiaallokossa. Näkökulmia Itämeren ympäristöhistoriaan (2010)
- Nautica Fennica
- Esipuhe (2007) Sodan ekologia: nykyaikaisen sodankäynnin ympäristöhistoriaa Simo Laakkonen, Timo Vuorisalo
- Sodan ekologia. Nykyaikaisen sodankäynnin ympäristöhistoriaa (2007) Simo Laakkonen, Timo Vuorisalo
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