I'm Ahto Apajalahti, Master of Arts and a PhD student at the University of Helsinki Doctoral Programme in History and Cultural Heritage (ORCID: 0000-0002-4243-6115). The topic of my PhD is the history of science popularization in Finland during the early cold war period, from 1945 to 1969. I'm also studying the motives for science popularization, i.e. the ideological, political and even religious aspects behind the spreading of scientific world-view in the European periphery. My main sources are newspapers, audiovisual media and popular science literature.
I've worked on different academic projects related to Finnish economic, political and media history. I've been affiliated with the Capitalism, State & Society research group and a media history research project at the University of Helsinki. I'm also a member of a history of knowledge/science group at the University of Turku. My broad research interests are cultural history of science, media history, history of the information society, science and technology studies, general history of Finland, the Nordic countries, and Cold War Europe, and historical theory.
My other main activity has for several years been politics and especially political activism related to information society and human rights. Politically, I'm a member of the Finnish Greens, specifically Greens for Science and Tehcnology. I was a founding member and long-time activist of Finnish Pirate Party, but switched parties to Greens in 2019.
From 2016 to 2018 I was a board member at Electronic Frontier Finland (Effi), which is affiliated with European Digital Rights (EDRi). I've done some lobbying for Effi, e.g. participated in expert hearings on information society legislation at parliamentary committees of the Finnish parliament. I'm also a former active member of JEF Finland, and you might call me a bit of an EU nerd.
I was born in and currently live in Helsinki, Finland and my native language is Finnish.
Feel free to contact me. You can write to me in either English, Swedish or German, although I'll most likely reply in English. You can also follow me on Twitter.