Henna-Elise Ventovirta

Henna-Elise Ventovirta (she/her) is a doctoral researcher in International Relations at Tampere University, based in the Politics Unit. Her scholarship is rooted in a commitment to eco-social transformation, climate justice, and the (re)discovery of caring, diverse economies through activist research. Her PhD project, titled Post-Capitalist Choreographies of the Climate Crisis: International Climate Action Camps as Spaces of Corporeal Resistance, Coexistence and Recovery, is funded by the Kone Foundation. In this research, she explores the embodied emotional politics of the climate crisis, the emergence of diverse economies, and caring practices within international climate action camps. Her methodology is grounded in multi-sited ethnography, feminist curiosity, and embodied research practices.

Henna-Elise is also part of the POSTCAPE research project, Assembling Postcapitalist International Political Economy, funded by the Academy of Finland. As part of this project, she co-edited the book Retheorising Capitalism, published by Tampere University Press. She actively contributes to creating participatory learning spaces and de-hierarchising knowledge production within academia. In October 2023, she co-organised the “Retheorising Capitalism Funfair,” an alternative academic workshop-event at Tampere University.

Henna-Elise’s scholarly expertise spans Feminist International Relations, International Political Economy, Social Movement studies, arts-based research methods, ethnography, and embodied research methodologies. She is currently training in trauma-informed integrative somatic practices and is passionate about bridging embodied practice with academic research. Her work seeks to cultivate spaces of collective resilience, emotional intelligence, and transformative political agency. Beyond academia, Henna-Elise is a founding member of the Berlin-based collectives Kipppunkt Kollektiv – Education for Climate Justice and Urgent Bodies – Activating Corporeality for Political Change. In addition to her scholarly work, she also works as a dancer with the Swiss compagnie el contrabando, further deepening her commitment to embodied expression and political transformation through multiple modalities.

The Finnish Political Science Association award for the best master’s thesis in political science 2019–2020 Henna-Elise Selkälä: Embodying climate justice: An ethnographic inquiry into the resisting choreography of the climate movement Ende Gelände. University of Tampere. 

Dombroski, K., Kettula, A., Hwang, L., Khawar, M., Kruglanski, A., Van Leeuwen, A., McLean, H., McLellan, G., Mullen, M., Mäensivu, M., Pajunen, I., Paraná, E., Ramcilovic-Suominen, S., Tuhoro-Bodey, C., Vaittinen, T., Woodward, K., & Young, M. L. (2025). Retheorising capitalism (A. Kangas, I. Gataulina, M. Poutanen, A. I. Rajala, & H.-E. Ventovirta, Eds). Tampere University Press. https://doi.org/10.61201/tup.981

Selkälä, Henna-Elise (2020). Embodying climate justice: An ethnographic inquiry into the resisting choreography of the climate movement Ende Gelände. https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:tuni-202005135246 

Selkälä, Henna-Elise (2018) Protestoivat kehot näyttävät, miten Pariisin ilmastosopimus laitetaan toimeen. Politiikasta: Ajankohtainen ja ajaton tiedeverkkolehti. https://politiikasta.fi/protestoivat-kehot-nayttavat-miten-pariisin-ilmastosopimus-laitetaan-toimeen/