Veikko Anttonen is a professor emeritus of religious studies at the University of Turku, Finland.
He was born in Nousiainen, Finland, in 1948. Having graduated from the University of Helsinki, he worked as an assistant at the departments of Comparative Religion, Folklore, and Sociology at the University of Helsinki and the University of Jyväskylä.
He has been a research assistant for the Academy of Finland for a number of years. In 1998, he became full professor of comparative religion at the University of Turku. He served as vice-president of the European Association for the Study of Religions, as president of the Finnish Society for the Study of Religion, and as editor-in-chief of TEMENOS, the leading periodical on the study of religion in Scandinavia.
Veikko Anttonen’s main fields of research comprise the anthropology of religion and comparative religion. The most important focal points therein include the issues of the sacred, the “pyhä,” sacred places, sacred spaces, the concept of sacredness and its forms of manifestation. It has been in these areas that he has managed to complete outstanding achievements at the international level through his books, studies, and other scholarly publications.
For decades, Professor Anttonen has been working in close and intensive co-operation with the University of Debrecen. He has been regularly involved in the undergraduate and doctoral programs of the Department of Ethnography and has been active in hosting international conferences and editing scholarly publications in co-operation with our university. In merit of his sincere and fruitful efforts, Veikko Anttonen was awarded the memorial medal Pro Ethnographia in 1997.
He received the title of doctor honoris causa of the University of Debrecen in 2010.
