Arja Anna-Leena Siikala (formerly Kuusi, née Aarnisalo, born Helsinki, 1 January 1943, died Espoo, 27 February 2016)[1] was a professor emeritus at the University of Helsinki, specialising in folk-belief, mythology, and shamanism, along with oral storytelling and traditionality.
Anna-Leena Siikala graduated as a Master of Philosophy from the University of Helsinki in 1968, took her licenciate degree in 1970, and Ph.D. in 1978.
Siikala held the following professorships: She undertook fieldwork in Finland and the Cook Islands in Polynesia, and among the Finnic-speaking peoples of Russia, Udmurt people, the Komi peoples, and the Khanty people of Siberia.
[3] Siikala's most important research projects were Myth, history, society: Ethnic/National Traditions in the Age of Globalization (1999–2004) and The Other Russia: Cultural Multiplicity in the Making (2004–2007).
Together with Mihály Hoppál and Vladimir Napolskikh she edited the Encyclopaedia of Uralic Mythologies.