Public Lecture by Professor Laura Assmuth

Professor Laura Assmuth, from the University of Eastern Finland, will give
a public lecture entitled "Time Passes Quickly in Estonia: a Foreign
Anthropologist's Viewpoint". The lecture will be held in auditorium M-218
(TU Mare building, Uus-Sadama 5) on Tuesday, 5 June at 12:00.In her lecture
Professor Assmuth will discuss the character and direction of Estonia's
transformation by reflecting on her research and other experiences of the
country during the last 15 years. She will also consider Estonia in
relation to its Baltic and Nordic neighbours. During the past twenty years
of independence Estonia has undergone a huge societal transformation. The
pace and direction of the transformation have been viewed with marvel,
admiration, envy and worry, depending on the observer's perspective. Based
on her long-term research experience in Estonia, Professor Assmuth claims
that after the detachment from the Soviet Union, and during the subsequent
years of independence, Estonian society has changed. The change has not
only been fundamental, but it has also affected people's mentality.
Time really passes more quickly in Estonia than elsewhere. Hurrying is, in
many ways, the new ethos of Estonia: hurrying forward, hurrying in order to
detach and differentiate itself from Russia, hurrying to catch up with
Finland, hurrying to get back to Europe. As an outside observer Professor
Assmuth asks: Are Estonians perhaps also in a hurry to get rid of a
difficult past, in a hurry to forget? What about those who cannot or will
not hurry? Can a small country afford to leave segments of its population
lagging behind?Laura Assmuth is Professor of Social Policy in the
Deptartment of Social Sciences, University of Eastern Finland. Professor
Assmuth’s research interests include the anthropological study of gender
and age; borders, border regions and cross-border encounters; migration;
identities; and the study of peripheral rural areas in Europe. Assmuth
holds a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Helsinki. She has
carried out ethnographic fieldwork in southern Italy and Sardinia, and more
recently in Estonia, Latvia, northwest Russia and eastern Finland. Assmuth
is the author of a monograph entitled "Women’s Work, Women’s Worth:
Changing Life-courses in Highland Sardinia" (1997). She has managed several
international research projects on rapid cultural and social change in
post-socialist Baltic countries and adjacent areas in Russia and has
published the results of these studies in several languages.The Tallinn
University Estonian Institute of Humanities is organizing the lecture.For
further information please contact:Heleri LuugaE-mail: heleri.luuga@tlu.ee