Tuomas Aivelo is interested in small-scale everyday multispecies encounters in backyards, kitchen counters and trash cans as these have the power to shape the world from biodiversity to human institutions. In addition to lectures and scientific publications, Tuomas shares his observations in public talks, blog posts, non-fiction books and columns.

More information about Tuomas Aivelo

Dutch Multispecies Homes

Human homes are sites of indisputed human mastery: humans have an autonomy on acting and affecting other species, whether it is inviting, capturing, planting and attracting other species into this sphere or poisoning, smashing, plucking and throwing species away from home. These are some of the most meaningful, and at least most mundane and closest relations that humans have. Homes are also an important habitat for a number of synanthropic species. Homes have also a larger importance: A substantial part of the urban greenery is on private backyards and globally 0.7% of Earth surface is indoor space. This project attempts to unveil the interplay between human owners and other species with them.

Helsinki Urban Rat Project

Rats are one of the most infamous human companion species. Interestingly, they are almost totally dependent on humans providing food for them, while humans are doing their utmost to kill them (excluding the flow of food). Helsinki Urban Rat Project studies rats in the area of the city of Helsinki in a wide variety of disciplines from disease and movement ecology to cultural history, environmental policy, educational sciences and even visual arts. More than 3 000 lower and upper secondary school students and 100 waste collectors have taken part in the collection of the data. It has built a stakeholder group involving authorities working on environmental health, biocide regulation and nature protection, private companies such as building maintenance, waste management and pest managements and NGOs on animal welfare on national, regional and municipal level. More on the project: Urban Rats | University of Helsinki

Sex and Gender in the Biology Education

Biology education is in the center of cultural wars related to what sex and gender actually are. This research project has started from a simple conundrum: the Finnish national curriculum requires that every school subject teach about the diversity of sex/gender, whereas biology textbooks in human biology commonly has a spread, where binary division into “male” and “female” genitalia are shown in anatomical drawings. How do teachers, students and textbooks thread this (non-existing) conceptual framework that combines humans and non-humans and their biological (such as physiological, genetical, anatomical, hormonal), psychological (sexual, identity, emotional) and cultural (traditional, historical, societal, occupational, educational) sex/gender?

Grants

Current funding: Finnish Research Council Academy Fellowship, 2023-2027.

Prizes

• Nominee for Vuoden Tiedekynä (Best Finnish-language scientific article in environmental sciences during 2021-23) by Kone Foundation
• National Open Science Award of the Finnish Learned Societies, 2023
• J.V.Snellman Prize for Science Communication from University of Helsinki, 2019
• Loputtomat Loiset (Endless Parasites) book nominated for Finlandia prize for the Best Non-Fiction Book and got honorary mention from Finnish Science Book of the Year competition, 2019
• Silver Badge of Merit of the Finnish Biology and Geography Teachers’ Association

Key publications

• Lähdesmäki, H., Aivelo, T., & Savolainen, P. (2024). Bird feeding devices exclude unwelcome visitors. More-than-humans shaping the architecture and technology of birdfeeders in twentieth-century Finland. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241242680

• Kervinen, A., & Aivelo, T. (2023). Secondary school students' responses to epistemic uncertainty during an ecological citizen science inquiry. Science Education, 107, 1352–1379. https://doi.org/10.1002/sce.21809

• Aivelo, T., Neffling, E., & Karala, M. (2022). Representation for whom? Transformation of sex/gender discussion from stereotypes to silence in Finnish biology textbooks from 20th to 21th century. Journal of Biological Education, 58(2), 297–311. https://doi.org/10.1080/00219266.2022.2047099

Brief biography

Tuomas Aivelo works in the crossroads of natural and social sciences. His scholarly career started in both ecology and evolutionary biology and science education.

Tuomas did the fieldwork for his PhD in Madagascar, catching wild mouse lemurs and following longitudinally their parasite communities. For postdoc, he went to the Swiss Alps to collect ticks on the elevational gradients. Growing old and weary, he ended up becoming research group leader by studying rats in his own backyard. At the same time he did a number of studies how students and their teachers understand what genes are and how they function.

While these two research avenues remained for a long time separate avenues of research, lately Helsinki Urban Rat Project has provided a way for life and social sciences to be combined through citizen science, participatory methods and exploration of anthropogenic landscapes. Rats are a perfect focus species, as they require the natural science approach to focus more humans and social sciences approach to decenter humans: to understand rats’ lives the humans need to be studied, as they are a central player in shaping rats’ environment, whereas rats are a perfect posthumanist tool to start thinking how humans become urban animals with rats.

Studying rats lead Tuomas to wade into environmental education and animals’ atmospheres, science education and epistemic uncertainty during inquiry process, cultural history and multispecies design of birdfeeders, adult education and care practices in the backyard, and environmental psychology and multispecies conflicts in the allotment gardens.

Currently Tuomas wants to work with humans and non-humans around the concept of homes and to uncover the multispecies nature of Dutch homes and how it relates to biodiversity.

In addition to trying to get to people’s homes physically to study their most intimate relations, Tuomas is established science communicator who is sought-after expert in media. Tuomas writes a monthly nature column for Finnish magazine Tiede Luonto. His prize-winning book Loputtomat loiset (Endless parasites) has been translated to Hungarian, Japanese and Spanish.

Tuomas has worked in international and EU-level working groups related to evolution education, preventing pandemics and One Health governance. He’s has been advisor to Finnish Parliament and other authorities on EU, national, regional and municipal level.

Publications