Visa Immonen is Professor of Archaeology at the University of Turku in Finland. Prior to this he was Assistant Professor of Cultural Heritage Studies at the University of Helsinki, a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University (2010–2011), and a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Getty Research Institute (2015–2016). His research focuses on medieval material culture, especially luxury consumption. His doctoral dissertation, Golden Moments—Artefacts of Precious Metals as Products of Luxury Consumption in Finland c. 1200–1600, was published in 2009. He has continued to combine archaeological and art historical methods in articles including “Connecting Things through the Visual Arts: Medieval Crescent Moon Pendants as Horse Ornaments” (Norwegian Archaeological Review, 2013), and “Fondling on the Kitchen Table—Artefacts, Sexualities and Performative Metaphors in the 15th to 17th Centuries” (Journal of Social Archaeology, 2014). At Bard Graduate Center, he will be completing a book manuscript on scientific analyses conducted on medieval relics and reliquaries across Europe.

In addition to medieval studies, Immonen is engaged in cultural heritage studies, and has recently published a monograph on the development of Finnish cultural heritage legislation and administration during the twentieth century. He has also discussed issues related to cultural heritage in such articles as “‘Quidditching’, and the Emergence of New Heritage Identities: Amateur Metal Detecting in Finland” (with Joonas Kinnunen, Public Archaeology, 2017), and “Photographic Bodies and Biographical Narratives: The Finnish State Archaeologist Juhani Rinne in Pictures” (Photography & Culture, 2012).