Tiia Sudenkaarne

I'm a queer feminist philosopher focusing on ethics and moral theory. I currently work at University of Lapland in the project Gendered Ethics of Reproductive Time: Science, Technology and
the Market/ Lisääntymisen ajan sukupuolistunut etiikka: tiede, teknologia ja markkinat (ReproTime). It is funded by Academy of Finland (project no. 362800) with sociologist Riikka Homanen as its PI.

In ReproTime, we consider how time modified by assistive reproduction technologies becomes the subject of ethical evaluation. We focus on three technological practices in the interrelated sites of science, healthcare and bioindustry: reproductive tissue donation; gamete/embryo cryopreservation, and health-data-driven artificial intelligence and machine learning apps in fertility treatments. By exploring ethical evaluations, we seek to account for the moral ambivalences of these technologies and their temporal consequences as both oppressive and enabling.

My areas of expertise include applied ethics, bioethics, feminist bioethics, queer bioethics and feminist philosophy. My research interests include health, sickness, embodiment, care, gender, sexuality, posthumanism and theories of justice interrogated by complex, lived injustices. These interests are met in my two overarching, contextual topics of interest: reproduction and antimicrobial resistance, both to be understood as socially mediated. 

For the past years, I have been working in various projects regarding social study of microbes at the CSSM at University of Helsinki sociology. My theoretical work focuses on developing a queer feminist posthuman framework for ethics and exploring the ethical possibilities of haunting. 

I obtained my doctoral degree at University of Turku in September 2021. My dissertation in the field of philosophy focused on queer and feminist bioethics and received both praise from my internal examiner, professor emerita Jamie Nelson (University of Michigan) and an excellent grade.  I completed my dissertation in the project Technology, Ethics and Reproduction: Controversy in the Era of Normalization (ReproEthics) funded by Kone Foundation for Tampere University. In that project we mobilised the concepts of ethical labour and queer bioethics to conceptualise the ethical considerations and deliberations people perform in managing their own and other's reproduction. In July 2021, I joined the Academy of Finland project (no. 324322) Social Study of Antimicrobial Resistance at University of Helsinki. In the project looking at AMR in the contexts of health care, animals and ethics, I discovered and started to bridge the lacuna of AMR ethics from a queer feminist, posthumanist viewpoint.

I currently chair The Finnish Association for Medical Law and Ethics (SLOES). I am a member of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics' (FAB) advisory board and a member of the steering group for Cultural Interaction Researcher Network (KULTVA, University of Turku) . I am the editor-in-chief of Finnish Society for Queer Studies' Journal (SQS-lehti) issue 3/2025.  I have also chaired The Finnish Society for Queer Studies (SQS).

I have been shortlisted for Feminist Approaches to Bioethics’ Donchin and Holmes essay prize in 2016 and Mark S. Ehrenreich Prize in Healthcare Ethics Research in 2020.  I currently have thirteen peer-reviewed outputs with another five accepted for publication and in different stages of the publication process.  In addition to written published work including blog posts, responses and reviews, I have presented and chaired at nearly forty academic conferences, for which I was awarded a Superlative Presentation award at TIIKM International Conference on Gender and Sexuality 2023.  As a PhD candidate I held a temporary salary position in University of Turku Philosophy. I have organized two international conferences hosting academic trailblazers such as Lance Wahlert, a driving force behind queer bioethical theory, and Amrita Pande, one of the first and amogst the most influential ethnographers of surrogacy work in India. I have received several grants for my academic work and travel, including stipends from University of Oxford, University of Cambridge and feminist philosophy’s internationally most acclaimed journal Hypatia.

I am a proud member of the queer feminist community, a mother of a rainbow family, a dark history buff, en enthuastic sauna-goer and an all-year swimmer. I love to meet new people so don't hesitate to come chat :)