Anni Kajanus is a cognitive and psychological anthropologist, working at the interfaces between culture and cognition, morality and cooperation. Her regional focus is China, where she has worked on a range of topics including migration, one-child policy, gender, education, and child-development. Anni has also carried out comparative research in London, UK, and in Helsinki area, Finland. 

Her most recent research brings together methods and approaches from anthropology and psychology, for a comparative study of children's social and cognitive development across cultural-historical contexts, including cooperative behaviours, morality, understanding of social hiearchies, etc. The broader aim of this work is to contribute to the multi-disciplinary study of the origins of human social behaviour.

Anni is the author of Chinese Student Migration, Gender and Family, which situates the family project of investing in the overseas education of the only child within the wider socio-moral transformation of the Chinese society, and China's engagement in the international education market.

Before joining UH, Anni held postdoctoral fellowships (Marie Sklodowska-Curie; Leverhulme) at the Department of Anthropology, LSE, and the Department of Psychology, Harvard.

Anni received her PhD in Anthropology from the University of Helsinki, MSc in Migration Studies from the University of Amsterdam, and BA in Anthropology from the University of Kent.

Current courses: Persons and Social Relations; Contemporary Anthropological Theory; Bachelor's Seminar; Ethnographic Methodologies