Anna Simola holds a PhD in sociology. She is an FNRS postdoctoral research fellow at the Interdisciplinary Research Center on Families and Sexualities (CIRFASE) at the UCLouvain (Belgium). She is also an affiliated postdoctoral researcher at the Centre of Excellence for Research on Ageing and Care (RG 3 Migration, Care and Ageing) at the University of Helsinki. In her work she develops critical approaches to research on EU migration with a particular interest on questions of autonomy and dependency. Her research covers a range of topics including employment precarity and lived subjectivity under neoliberal governance, interplay of welfare and border regimes from a transnational perspective; aging and vulnerability; as well as family affinities and personal life. Her current research investigates transnational family relations in the context of EU free mobility, focusing particularly on the lived experiences of large-scale global ‘crises’ in the context of transnational family life. 

Anna obtained her PhD at the University of Helsinki in 2021. Her PhD reseach titled "Passionate Mobile Citizens or Precarious Migrant Workers? Young EU Migrants, Neoliberal Governance and Inequality within the Free Movement Regime" investigated young European Union (EU) citizens’ experiences of free mobility in precarious labour conditions. 

Until the late 2010 she worked at the University of Tampere as a project researcher on issues related to migration, labour migration and economic press at the Research Centre for Journalism, Media and Communication.