Jutta Jokiranta
University of Helsinki
Curriculum vitae

Jokiranta is Professor of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and Cognate Studies at the University of Helsinki, Faculty of Theology (2018‒). Before this position, she was Academy Research Fellow (2014‒2018) for her project Ritual and Change in the Qumran Movement and Judaean Society, when she also led Team 4 Society and Religion in Late Second Temple Judaism in the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions (CSTT, 2014‒2019, PI Prof. Martti Nissinen).

Jokiranta is docent in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament studies at the University of Helsinki (since 2013). She defended her doctoral thesis Identity on a Continuum: Constructing and Expressing Sectarian Social Identity in Qumran Serakhim and Pesharim in 2005, and earned her Doctoral Degree in Theology at the University of Helsinki in 2006. She is the author of Social identity and Sectarianism in the Qumran Movement (Brill 2013), and co-editor of Law, Literture, and Society in Legal texts from Qumran (Brill 2019), Social Memory and Social Identity in the Study of Early Judaism and Early Christianity (Brill 2016), Scripture in Transition (Brill 2008). Her articles can be found listed in Publications. She was Dead Sea Discoveries Thematic Issue Editor 2015‒2021, and is co-editor for the Brill series Studies on the Texts of the Desert of Judah (STDJ, 2022‒).

Previous positions at the University of Helsinki include University Lecturership in Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies (2009‒2018) and Research Fellowship (2007‒2010) at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, which is an international reserach institution. Jokiranta has also worked at the Department of Biblical Studies as Lecturer (2005‒2006), Assistant (2003‒2004), and as Researcher in the Finnish Academy Research Unit for the Formation of Early Jewish and Christian Ideology (various periods between 1998 and 2005).

Other central duties:

STDJ Series co-editor 2022‒.

International Organization of Qumran Studies, President 2016‒2022.

SBL Annual Meeting Program Unit "Qumran and Dead Sea Scrolls", co-chair 2022‒, member 2019‒21.

Dead Sea Discoveries (Brill) Thematic Issue editor 2015‒2021.

SBL Annual Meeting Program Unit "Mind, Society, and Religion: Cognitive Science Approaches to Biblical World", chair 2014‒2020.

Vice Dean for Research, Faculty of Theology, UH, 2022‒2025.

Equality Committee, University of Helsinki, vice member 2021‒2024.

Finnish Institute in the Middle East (FIME), board member 2014–.

Director of MA Programme in Theology and Religious Studies, UH, 2021.

Committee assessing teaching skills, Faculty of Theology, Chair 2018‒2021.

Finnish Exegetical Society, chair 2016–2022.

Helsinki University Library Advisory Board, member 2018‒2022.

Research interests

Jokiranta's special field within Hebrew Bible Studies is Qumran (Dead Sea Scrolls) studies and Second Temple Judaism. Her research interests include social changes within late Second Temple Judaism, ritual studies, social identity construction in ancient religious movements, ethnicity, archaeology of Hellenistic and Roman Palestine, cognitive science of religion, sociology of sectarianism in early Judaism and early Christianity, and collective memory and transmission of traditions.