I am Tarja Aaltonen. Born in spring 1961, my sign is Taurus and maybe I am as stubborn and robust as Taurus. I live in Kangasala, one of the municipalities in the Tampere Region, in the centre of Finland. In the region’s web site Kangasala is described as a region that provides its residents with opportunities of work and prosperity, good traffic connections and attractive living conditions in an environment that combines the centrally located town (near by) with clean nature and rural landscape.

Although I live with my family in the middle of the forest (as our son has described the place), I only have a 30 –minute car drive to the university. I have studied in the University of Tampere since 1982, defended my doctoral thesis in 2002, and now work as a researcher in the Department of Sociology and Social Psychology.