Riikka Miettinen

Riikka Miettinen is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences (HEX), based at Tampere University, Finland, where she also holds the title of Associate Professor (Docent) in Social History. She is a historian specializing in the early modern period, with particular expertise in the social history of madness, disability, suicide, and legal practices in 17th-18th century Sweden and Finland.

Dr. Miettinen's research focuses on how early modern communities interpreted and responded to mental disturbances, suicide, and disability within the context of Lutheran orthodoxy and evolving legal systems. Her work examines the intersection of religious beliefs, legal practices, and community responses to these phenomena, revealing how local contexts and social relationships shaped historical experiences. She employs a multidisciplinary approach that combines legal history, social history, and history of experiences to analyze court records, ecclesiastical documents, legislation, and contemporary literature.

Her recent publications demonstrate a consistent focus on the lived experiences of marginalized individuals in early modern Nordic societies. The trends in her work show increasing attention to disability history alongside her foundational research on suicide and madness. Dr. Miettinen's scholarship reveals how categories of mental impairment and disability were constructed through local negotiations rather than top-down legal mandates, challenging traditional narratives of social control in early modern Europe. Her research demonstrates that legal statutes often differed significantly from actual practice, with local communities adapting and interpreting laws according to their specific circumstances and needs.

As a Senior Research Fellow at HEX, Dr. Miettinen participates in collaborative research projects examining historical experiences across different time periods and cultures. Her work contributes to the center's mission of understanding how people in the past perceived, interpreted, and made sense of their world, with special attention to experiences that have been marginalized or pathologized in historical records. Through her research on suicide, madness, and disability, she brings to light the complex ways in which early modern communities navigated issues that continue to challenge contemporary societies.