Anne Birgitta Pessi

The Nils Klim Committee Citation

Anne Birgitta Pessi, former Yeung, (b. 29.12.1975), is Academy Research Fellow of the Academy of Finland and attached to Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (University of Helsinki). Her field of research is sociology of religion.

Dr Pessi obtained her doctoral degree in 2004 from the University of Helsinki on a thesis which deals with volunteerism within the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland. This work is a strong example of interdisciplinary work at the crossroads of theology, social policy studies and sociology. Her study reveals the dynamic interplay between social independence and dependence in relation to social ties and religiosity, e.g. how new kinds of networks and bonds are replacing more traditional social ones. In her thesis, she develops a novel theoretical interdisciplinary model of motivation, the ‘Octagon Model’, which already has had a certain impact on her field. Dr Pessi’s current research interests include altruism, justice in the welfare state, volunteerism and urban religion. She has been active within two international research programmes and recently received a grant from The Academy of Finland for a research project on ‘Religion in Transforming Solidarity’. She has an impressive list of publications for her age, and two of her articles, published in leading academic journals, belong to the most down-loaded and cited in 2006. She has lectured in a number of universities outside her home country. In August 2004, London School of Economics granted her the status of a visiting scholar.

Anne Birgitta Pessi’s research is on the borderline between theology and social sciences, and her studies on altruism combine quantitative studies with a hermeneutically oriented approach. Through her studies, she has become involved in the lively international discussion on civil society, social capital, honesty and trust. Her approach is innovative in providing a more diverse picture of the linkage between faith and volunteering than previous work.