Dr Pieta Savinotko

In their PhD research, completed in 2022, Dr Pieta Savinotko examined the everyday food production practices in three ethnographic settings from the perspective of diverse, multispecies economies. The PhD thesis, half in Finnish and half in English, proposes new ways of understanding small-scale and self-sufficient food production as economic activity in more-than-human networks. With academic background in Gender Studies, feminist perspectives, particularly feminist post-anthropocentric theories and feminist epistemologies, play a prominent role in Dr Savinotko’s research.

Together with Tuomo Alhojärvi, Pieta Savinotko has contributed to the translation of of Take Back the Economy in Finnish, accomplished by translator Eeva Talvikallio. This process is reflected upon in a chapter by Alhojärvi and Savinotko (formerly Hyvärinen) in the Handbook of Diverse Economies (2020).

Currently Dr Savinotko works as a postdoctoral researcher in Cultural Studies at the University of Eastern Finland in Joensuu. The joint project of four researchers experiments with the notion of ‘post-ownership’ as a tool to examine the trajectories of economic transition and the discourses concerning them. The project is led by Juhana Venäläinen and funded by the Kone Foundation.

In addition, Dr Savinotko is collecting longitudinal research data in a School of Self-sufficiency (Omavaraopisto) in Northern Carelia. They have also studied, practiced, and published on feminist pedagogy in higher education.

Pieta Savinotko is a member of the Community Economies Research Network since 2017 and member of the Community Economies Institute since 2023. In 2021, they were awarded the ”Vuoden Tiedekynä” writing award for the best Finnish academic article of the year.