Henna-Elise Ventovirta
Henna-Elise Ventovirta
Feminist Research · Embodied Practice · Trauma‑informed Birth Work
Through feminist research, embodied practice, and trauma-informed birth work, I support eco‑social transformation and justice‑oriented change. I work where bodies and politics meet — weaving curiosity, relationality, and collective care into research, movement‑building, and the everyday work of imagining more livable futures. My commitment is to nurturing caring and diverse economies, strengthening social justice movements, and exploring how embodied pathways can shape more just, joyful and connected worlds.
Where the Body meets Politics
Learn more about...
Photo: Johannes Heinke
Roots and Orientation
I grew up in the marshlands and forests of Northern Finland — landscapes that taught me interdependence, attuned me to the cycles and seasons of ecosystems, and rooted in me a deep care for place. From an early age, I was enchanted by the natural world: wandering on the marshes, picking berries in the forest, watching the subtle shifts of light and weather. These were places of wonder and belonging. They were also where my heartbreak and politicisation began, as the lands I loved came under threat from extractivism, pollution, and the violence of the forest industry. These early experiences continue to shape my commitments. Over the years, I have organised for climate justice across Europe and helped co-create prefigurative learning spaces with the Berlin-based Kipppunkt Kollektiv. Through this work, I have come to cherish the quiet, persistent labour — and love — of collective world‑making. Alongside organising, my path has been shaped by flamenco dance —especially with the compagnie el contrabando and co-curating the Helsinki Flamenco festival in 2019 with Marja Rautakorpi and Tove Djupsjöbacka—, creative movement, and somatic practice. I co-founded Urgent Bodies, a group of activists and performing artists to research how embodiment and activism could support each other... Embodied ways of knowing have remained central to how I understand resilience, relation, and transformation. Across all my commitments, I return again and again to the body as a site of re‑membering, resistance, and regeneration — a place where personal and political worlds meet, and where new futures can begin to take form.
Feminist Research
International Relations and Social Movement Studies
Photo: Johannes Heinke
My research explores how bodies, emotions, and collective practices shape global politics, especially in times of ecological crisis. As a feminist scholar in International Relations, I work with and alongside social justice movements, tracing how embodied forms of resistance, care, and world‑making contribute to eco‑social transformation. I am currently completing my doctoral research at Tampere University, where my Kone Foundation funded research project — Post‑Capitalist Choreographies of the Climate Crisis — examines international climate action camps as spaces of corporeal resistance, coexistence, and recovery. Through multi‑sited ethnography, feminist curiosity, and embodied methodologies, I investigate how diverse economies, care practices, and movement‑based forms of organising emerge in these experimental spaces.
I was part of the POSTCAPE project (Assembling Postcapitalist International Political Economy), funded by the Academy of Finland. Within this collective, I co‑edited the book Retheorising Capitalism, which gathers plural, critical, and imaginative approaches to thinking beyond dominant economic paradigms. This work reflects my commitment to creating de‑hierarchised, participatory academic spaces — including the 2023 “Retheorising Capitalism Funfair,” an experimental workshop bringing research, creativity, and collective inquiry together.
My scholarly path has also been shaped by my ethnographic master's thesis "Embodying climate justice", where I examined the emotional and embodied dimensions of climate justice activism in action of civil disobedience; a project that seeded my long‑standing interest in how political agency is formed through the body, through relations, and through shared struggle. The thesis was granted the Finnish Political Science Association award for the best master’s thesis in political science in 2019–2020.
Alongside my university‑based research, I engage in transdisciplinary and activist‑scholarly networks. I am a member of the CERN Community Economies Research Network, where scholars and practitioners collaborate to imagine and cultivate diverse, caring economies. I am also affiliated with the ipb – Institut für Protest- und Bewegungsforschung, a Germany‑based network dedicated to researching social movements, resistance, and collective action. Both communities deeply inform my thinking, offering fertile spaces for collaboration, co‑creation, and intellectual‑political companionship.
My work bridges feminist International Relations, social movement studies, International Political Economy, community economies, ethnography, arts‑based and embodied research methods, and somatic inquiry. Across these fields, I remain committed to scholarship that honours relationality, creativity, and the intelligence of the body — supporting collective resilience, justice‑centred change, and the cultivation of caring and diverse economies.
Retheorising Capitalism
Co-editor and author
Anni Kangas (ed), Tampere University; Iuliia Gataulina (ed), Tampere University; Mikko Poutanen (ed), Tampere University; Anna Ilona Rajala (ed), Tampere University; Henna-Elise Ventovirta (ed), Tampere University
2025
Embodying climate justice: An ethnographic inquiry into the resisting choreography of the climate movement Ende Gelände
Author
Tampere University
2020
Photo: Jannis Grosse
Embodied Practice
Social Justice Somatics and Creative Movement
My embodied practice is rooted in trauma‑informed embodied practice, social justice somatics, creative movement, and improvisation. I support political organisers, activists, and others navigating exhaustion, overwhelm, grief and anger. Furthermore, I am working with people who wish to integrate and heal birth‑related trauma. My approach weaves nervous system attunement, movement, and creativity to foster resilience, grounding, and embodied agency. I am currently training in Integrative Somatic Trauma Therapy with Embody Lab to deepen my practice. Moreover, as part of my doctoral research on climate justice activism, I am also developing an Embodied Toolkit fo political organisers and change-makers. I work both with individuals and groups to create transformation through intentonal embodiment.
Photo: Johannes Heinke
Trauma-informed Birth Work
Doula and Advocate for Human Rights at Birth
As a full‑spectrum doula in training with Rainbow Doula Berlin, I accompany birth‑givers through pregnancy, birth, and early parenthood. My practice is grounded in reproductive justice, trauma‑informed support, and the belief that birth is a profound rite of passage deserving dignity, care, and agency. In my doula practice, I bring together somatic tools, feminist ethics, and an unwavering commitment to self‑trust and informed choice. I share with you the map of the birth landscape and support you in your decision-making. I am also honoured to accompany queer, non-binary and trans birth-givers and their families. My role is to hold space for your choices, your power, and your vulnerability, offering support that honours your unique journey. Please know that your questions, concerns, and wishes are always welcome; I am here to listen and adapt so that this care truly serves you. I work independently as a doula for you—not for your healthcare provider or any institution. In my practice as a doula I specialise in three fields: human rights at birth, trauma-informed birth work and embodied integration.
human rights at birth
Birth is a profound rite of passage — and it is also a space where systemic inequities, power dynamics, and gender‑based violence still shape experiences. In this cornerstone of my practice, I support birth‑givers and their families in understanding their human rights at birth, including informed consent, bodily autonomy, and the roles and responsibilities of care providers.
I offer evidence‑based, feminist guidance on navigating maternity systems, recognising obstetric violence as a form of gender‑based discrimination, and preparing for how to advocate for oneself (or one another) in institutional settings.
Together, we build skills in patient advocacy, communication, and grounding so that you can enter birth feeling informed, supported, and empowered. I provide this work for individuals and also for groups seeking training, preparation, or collective learning around birth rights and perinatal justice.
Trauma-informed Birth support
Preparing for birth is not only physical — it is emotional, somatic, relational, and shaped by our lived histories. It is also shaped by the social and institutional systems we are embedded in. In this part of my practice, I support birth‑givers and their partners in cultivating resources, grounding, and embodied awareness that can help create safety and agency in the birthing process.
Trauma‑informed birth work recognises that histories of stress, medical trauma, marginalisation, discrimination, or difficult life experiences can deeply influence how the body responds to birth. It also acknowledges that systems of oppression — including racism, sexism, queerphobia, ableism, and the hierarchical logics embedded in medical institutions — continue to affect what happens in the birth room. These forces can create environments where consent is not always respected, where coercion can occur, and where birth‑givers may feel disempowered or unseen.
Trauma‑informed practice does not ignore these realities. Instead, it provides ways to navigate them with knowledge, grounding, and support. Together, we explore tools for embodied resilience, self‑trust, boundary‑setting, emotional preparation, and understanding trauma‑sensitive care. We work with the nervous system — not against it — building inner and relational resources that help you stay connected to your body and your choices.
My approach brings together feminist ethics, somatic insight, and practical preparation. The aim is not to promise a specific kind of birth, but to help you meet your birth experience with clarity, connection, dignity, and support — whatever path it takes, and whatever systems we must navigate together.
embodied integration
Birth — whether soft, empowering, complicated, or traumatic — opens deep layers of experience. Integration is often needed long after the event itself. I offer a gentle, spacious environment to witness and process birth experiences through embodied practices, dialogue, and creative expression.
This may include working with movement, somatics, breath, imagery, and improvisation — inviting the body to speak, release, organise, and make meaning. For many, the process of being seen, heard, and witnessed is deeply reparative. In this space, vulnerability and power can coexist; the body can remember, reorganise, and reclaim.
I offer embodied integration sessions for individuals and groups, allowing people to explore their stories in ways that feel safe, creative, and grounded — tending to both what was challenging and what was strong, connective, or transformative.
My doula work weaves together human rights advocacy, trauma‑informed support, and embodied integration — creating spaces where birth‑givers can feel safe, informed, witnessed, and connected to their own power.
What if you sensed into your body
right now—
perhaps taking a breath,
perhaps feeling the temperature
on your skin—
and remembering
that you can root
right here
in the now.
Remembering the past,
invited by the future,
yet rooted
in the presence
of this moment.
And here,
gently,
you might ask yourself:
How does justice feel in your body?
What textures, tensions, openings
does the question stir?
Notice how,
from this place of sensing,
change can begin—
quiet at first,
then spreading,
reverberating
through breath,
through gesture,
through the world
you’re already shaping.
Photo: Lakea Film Company