Rosa Huotari

Research interests

I am postdoctoral researcher in practical/urban theology, currently focusing on urban religion, politics of belonging, and sense of safety in the research project CoCo – Exploring the Contested Constructions of Sense of Safety in Religious Spaces (funded by the Research Council of Finland). My research is qualitative and cross-disciplinary, drawing on social sciences, urban studies, and theology/religious studies. I am also keen to studying and developing research methodologies, especially ethnography.

Besides CoCo, I work in the research project Religious Realignments and Democratic Resilience: A Comparative Study of Religious Responses to (geo)political Crises at Åbo Akademi University (funded by HERA). Within this project, I focus on the questions of democracy, religious nationalism, and geopolitical crises. See more on my ÅA research profile.

In my PhD thesis (University of Helsinki, May 2025), I studied social inclusion and exclusion, as well as urban lived theology, in the context of faith-based food assistance in Finland.

I also serve as secretary of the Nordic Food Aid Research Network (NoFAiR) and as editorial secretary of the Finnish Journal for the Study of Diaconia (ISSN 1795-5270).