Dr Maaret Jokela-Pansini

Dr Maaret Jokela-Pansini is a health and environmental geographer whose research examines how people experience and respond to bodily harm, from industrial pollution and chronic illness to gendered violence, in contexts shaped by structural inequalities. A key question in her work is whose knowledge counts in such contexts to health systems, policymakers, and the public, and what possibilities different people have for communicating their experiences and needs – and impacting those conditions. In her work, Maaret develops and applies participatory and arts-based methods to co-produce knowledge with communities. From both methodological and theoretical perspectives, she views the body as both an analytical and political site. Her current empirical work includes two main contexts: inequalities in environmental health in steel-industry-exposed areas in Europe in Italy, Poland, and Belgium and experiences of Long Covid among patients in the UK and Switzerland in the Visualising Long Covid project-which has resulted in a toolkit co-produced with Long Covid patients. She works collaboratively with patient organisations, NGOs, and civil society partners and publishes in geography, social science and medicine, and interdisciplinary public health journals.

Maaret has been based at the School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford, since 2021, first as a Research Fellow and, since 2025, as Senior Research Associate. She also holds a second affiliation as Senior Scientist at the University of Zurich. She is a co-investigator and project manager of MISTRAL (Horizon Europe, 2023–2026), an interdisciplinary project developing a virtual dashboard to predict health impacts of industrial pollution across three European sites. She is also part of the METEOR cluster's Science to Policy working group. Her research has been supported by multiple Swiss National Science Foundation grants, as well as UKRI and Horizon Europe funding.

Prior to Oxford, she was doctoral researcher and teaching assistant in social and cultural geography at the University of Bern (2014-2018), held a visiting fellowship at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg (2015), and served as research fellow and co-coordinator of the SNSF-funded project Safeguarding Democracy: Contests of Values and Interests (2014-2018), a collaboration on human rights governance involving universities in Switzerland and South Africa. She also worked for three years in non-governmental organisations, an experience that continues to shape her commitment to community-engaged research. She holds an MA in Political Sciences from Humboldt University Berlin/University of Potsdam (Germany) and a PhD in Geography from the University of Bern (Switzerland).

MISTRAL - a toolkit for dynaMic health Impact analysiS to predicT disability-Related costs in the Aging population based on three case studies of steeL-industry exposed areas in Europe

This interdisciplinary project (2023-2026), funded by the EU funding programme Horizon Europe (EU grant agreement ID 101095119) and UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), combines epidemiology, biology, medicine, geography, and anthropology with researchers based in Italy, the UK, Belgium and Poland. It aims to develop a technological toolkit to predict the health impact of health-related features, and forecast trajectories of disability and quality of life reduction. This method will use environmental, socio-economic, geographical, and clinical characteristics. The generated models will be adjusted for lifestyle and individual conditions data sourced from large population-based digital surveys. The models will be trained and validated on three different exposures to steel plants' pollution in Taranto in Southern Italy, Rybnik in Poland, and Flanders in Belgium. At SoGE, our project team (PI Anna Lora-Wainwright) is responsible for stakeholder engagement and the social scientific part of the project.

Women living with Long Covid: a participatory approach to study access to healthcare services and support (UK and Switzerland) (2024-2025)

This study (2024-2025) explores patients' experiences of Long Covid in two different contexts in Switzerland and the UK. According to studies, Long Covid still dominates the daily lives of many patients, most of whom are women, and a key challenge for Long Covid hauliers is finding adequate support for their condition, which changes constantly. More information is therefore needed on the ways that Long Covid affects the everyday lives of patients and the ways they experience access to healthcare services and support from health professionals, family and friends. Research questions include:

1. How do women experience Long Covid, and how does it affect their everyday lives?
2. How do patients experience support and access to healthcare services depending on different social identities (gender, age, race, ethnicity, sexuality, and socioeconomic background)?
3. In what ways do these experiences differ (or share similarities) between women Long Covid hauliers in the UK and Switzerland?

This project, building on the previous project on Long Covid in the UK, draws on a patient-centred participatory approach in collaboration with the patient-led organisations Long Covid Support (UK) and Long Covid Switzerland (Chantal Britt), as well as the Bern University of Applied Sciences. The study draws on 1) interviews in the UK and Switzerland and 2) body mapping workshops. The comparison will help understand how access to services in two different settings shapes the overall experiences of Long Covid patients. Resulting in concrete visualisations – life-sized drawings of women’s bodies – the project will raise awareness of the illness to a broader public. The body maps will, moreover, help communicate patients’ needs to family, friends, health professionals and the broader public, and the study results will be disseminated beyond academia. The study is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation Grant P5R5PS_222164. It is based at the Department of Geography at the University of Zurich and the School of Geography and the Environment at the University of Oxford.

Whose health matters? Studying environmental inequalities in polluted environments

This project (2019-2022) is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation Grant #P500PS_195576 and is held in collaboration with Dr Beth Greenhough (University of Oxford), Prof Dr Anna Lora-Wainwright (University of Oxford), and Dr Elisabeth Militz (University of Guelph), as well as various local collaborators in Taranto. This project explores how residents in Taranto (Southern Italy), a city located by one of the largest steel plants in Europe, experience and respond to environmental pollution. The first paper on 'Breathing new futures' combined work on futures in (post-) industrial cities with scholarship on the lived experiences of people in polluted environments, and looked at the future-making practices of young people in Taranto. The second focus was on questions of gender and the ways women in Taranto make sense of pollution in relation to their reproductive health; beyond bodily toxicity and the political and social aspects of women's reproductive health in relation to pollution. Her study contributes to our understanding of women's concerns of environment-health relations and seeks to complement epidemiological studies on reproductive health and environmental pollution. Finally, in a collaborative study, the project uses participatory mapping to investigate the spatial dynamics of perceived and experienced health risks in relation to pollution, and how those experiences are shaped by age, gender, and socio-economic background.

Living in a chronically ill body: Mapping women's embodied experiences with long covid (Oxford, UK)

This project (2022-2024) is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation Grant #P2BEP1_206554 in collaboration with Prof Beth Greenhough (University of Oxford), Oonagh Cousins and Jo Dainow (Long Covid Support).

Long covid is a chronic illness and affects one in five COVID-19 patients. Recent studies have found that long covid particularly affects women and according to some studies, up to 70 percent of the patients are female. Female patients' symptoms are often being dismissed or attributed to anxiety or other psychological origin, also known as the 'gender pain gap'. By applying participatory methods, including body mapping and participatory mapping, this project aims to uncover the ways that women experience their (ill)health, manage their health condition, and experience support from health institutions and how these experiences vary depending on race, ethnicity, age, and socioeconomic background. The project aims to offer a space for women from different backgrounds to share experiences of living with long covid by working with long covid patients and engaging with different stakeholders, including patient support networks, local communities, and health professionals.

Experiences and practices of diversity among academia in geography

This study (2020-2021) was conducted in collaboration with PD Dr Jeannine Wintzer (University of Bern) and examined diversity practices in teaching at a Geography Department in Switzerland. Recent feminist geographic scholarship has urged geographers to distance themselves from androcentric and Eurocentric approaches, and to open up the discipline to diverse perspectives. While numerous studies have focused on diversifying and decolonizing geography through recruitment practices, mentoring, and knowledge production, only few have analysed how diversity translates into teaching practices, particularly in contexts where diversity is relatively well-established among staff. Based on a questionnaire survey among the teaching staff, a content analysis of course syllabi, and a quantitative analysis of the department's employee data, this study explores to what extent diversity within the department leads to diversity in teaching practices.

Safeguarding democracy: Contests of values and interests

In this project (2014-2018), funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation Grant #149053, Maaret was research fellow and project co-coordinator of the working group 'Gender Relations and Gender Violence'. This collaboration was led by Prof Dr Sheila Meintjes and Prof Dr Noor Nieftegaarden from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, Prof Dr Doris Wastl-Walter and Prof Dr Michelè Amacker from the University of Bern, and Elísio Macamo at the University of Basel. This project seeks to understand the role that contests of values and interests play in shaping and challenging democracy in Switzerland and South Africa. More specifically, we ask how commitment to certain values, for example, human rights and dignity, has fostered the emergence and formulation of social interests that through debate and action in the public sphere help sustain democracy in these two countries. We look into how democratic norms, including international norms, as carriers of values and rights, shape political action and the relationship of state and society. The empirical research focuses on two major fields: 'Social Movements, Migration and the Media' and 'Gender Relations and Gender Violence'.

Imagining, negotiating and transforming space. Women's human rights struggles in Honduras in a global context

This PhD project (2013-2018) was supervised by Prof Dr Doris Wastl-Walter (University of Bern) and PD Dr Elham Manea (University of Zurich) examines how women human rights activists in Honduras imagine, negotiate, and transform space in a global context. It discusses how the coup d'état in 2009 merged the spatial imaginaries of different women activists including feminists, indigenous and rural women, students, LGBTQ* activists, and labour unionists. Second, my study demonstrates that 'women human rights defenders' presents activists a new subjectivity and a negotiation position in the international human rights system because the international community recognises activists as witnesses and protectors of human rights violations. Finally, I conclude that 'women human rights defenders' is a form of transnational feminisms, which respond to global economic, political and socio-cultural challenges in the 21st century. Such practices, for example, approach violence as a structural phenomenon. Violence then is perceived as materialising itself through power relations and overlapping scales, including women's bodies, institutional restrictions on women's reproductive rights, and impunity of violence against women. However, human rights framing is confronted with both ideological and institutional challenges. Human rights discourses opened new opportunities for action, but many interviewees felt they remained outside of political decision-making. Others did not identify themselves as women human rights defenders but pursued the same goals. Using the concept can also be dangerous when states shift the concept and portray activists as a threat to national security. 'Scaling up' activism therefore is not only a choice but also a necessity.

Maaret is committed to teaching across disciplinary boundaries. She teaches modules on participatory methods and environmental justice and supervises MSc dissertations at the School of Geography and the Environment and the School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography at the University of Oxford. She regularly teaches in medical and public health settings on patient-centred research and participatory methods. Her teaching draws on her research practice and brings participatory and arts-based methods into the classroom as both subjects of study and pedagogical tools.

Journal Articles

• Jokela-Pansini, M., Cousins, O., Dainow, J. and Greenhough, B. (2026) From research method to community resource: Co-developing a body mapping toolkit for peer support with Long Covid patients. Social Science & Medicine, 119331.
• Ippolito, R., Sale, C. & Jokela-Pansini, M. (2025) Intergenerational narratives of toxicity: understanding heterogeneity and care in a polluted steeltown (Taranto, Italy). Biosocieties.
• Cousins, O., Jokela-Pansini, M., Alwan, N.A. , Barnard, E., Dainow, J., Dalton, C., Davies, G., Faghy, M.A., Gilmour, E., Patel, I., Sherwood, O., Westerhof, L. and Greenhough, B. (2025) Co-creating a social science research agenda for Long Covid. Frontiers in Public Health, 13.
• Ippolito, R., Lora-Wainwright, A., Greenhough, B. et al. (2025) Introduction to Special Issue: Reconceptualising toxicity and environmental justice. BioSocieties.
• Jokela-Pansini, M. (2024) Complicando las nociones de violencia: Una visión encarnada de la violencia contra las mujeres en Honduras. POLIS, Revista Latinoamericana, 23(67): 155-194.
• Jokela-Pansini, M., Greenhough, B., Cousins, O. and Dainow, J. (2024) When you can't find the words: Using body mapping to communicate patients' experiences of Long Covid. Health & Place, 89: 103302.
• Jokela-Pansini, M., Ippolito, R., Greenhough, B. and Lora-Wainwright, A. (2024) Creating safety amidst chronic contamination: A mixed-method analysis of residents' experiences in a Southern Italian steel town. Social Science and Medicine, 349: 116866.
• Greenhough, B., Jokela-Pansini, M., Kirksey, E. and Lorimer, J. (2024) Mapping Microbial Selves: Field Notes from a Dirty Parenting Project. Medicine Anthropology Theory, 11(1), 1-17.
• Jokela-Pansini, M. (2022) Beyond "toxic bodies": Multiplied rationalities of women's reproductive health in a high-risk environmental area (Taranto, Italy). Health and Place, 77. 102900.
• Jokela-Pansini, M. and Militz, E. (2022) Breathing new futures in polluted environments (Taranto, Italy). Transactions of the British Institute of Geographers.
• Jokela-Pansini, M. and Wintzer, J. (2022) Practicing diversity in higher education in geography. Exploring spaces of diversity in a geography department in Switzerland. The Professional Geographer.
• Jokela-Pansini, M. (2020) Complicating notions of violence: An embodied view of violence against women in Honduras. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 38(5): 848-865.
• Jokela-Pansini, M. (2019) Imaginarios espaciales e identidad colectiva en las luchas por los derechos humanos de las mujeres en Honduras. Latin American Journal of Geography and Gender, 10(2): 98-124.
• Jokela-Pansini, M. (2018) Multi-sited research methodology: improving understanding of transnational concepts. Area, 51(3): 516-523.
• Jokela-Pansini, M. (2016) Spatial imaginaries and collective identity in women's human rights struggles in Honduras. Gender, Place and Culture, 23(10): 1-15.

Book Chapters

• Jokela-Pansini, M. and De Marco, D. (forthcoming) Producing knowledge through art-research collaborations: Encountering, making, and developing body-health-environment relations in Southern Italy. In: Mollett, S. (ed.) Feminist Political Ecologies. Edgar Allen Publishing Ltd.
• Greenhough, B. and Jokela-Pansini, M. (2026) Pandemic. In: Merriman, Peter and Secor, A. (eds) The Routledge Handbook of Cultural Geographies. London: Routledge.
• Jokela-Pansini, M. and Thieme, S. (2024) Participatory methods. In: Warf, B. (ed.) Encyclopaedia of Human Geography. Cham: Springer Nature.
• Jokela-Pansini, M. (2021) Body mapping as a feminist visual method: Exploring the field through the body. In, Kogler, R. and Wintzer, J. (eds.) Raum und Bild - Strategien visueller raumbezogener Forschung. Springer, Heidelberg. pp. 69-82.

Reports

• Jokela-Pansini, M., Greenhough, B., Cousins, O. and Dainow, J. (2023) Women’s experiences of Long Covid. Project report.