Meeri Ott
The spectrum of transitioning bodies: experiences of menopause and (un)belonging
Meeri is a doctoral researcher examining menopause-related experiences among queer, lgbtiqa+, neurodivergent, chronically ill and disabled communities in Finland and Estonia. Her research explores how menopausing shapes experiences of belonging, exclusion and everyday life across different spaces and temporalities.
Meeri’s research is concerned with the ways environments are organised around assumptions of normative personhood, including ideas of productivity, predictable bodily rhythms, heteronormativity and assumption that people naturally aspire to these ideals. When these expectations do not match someone’s lived experience, familiar spaces and routines may feel difficult to inhabit. At the same time, people adapt, care for themselves and others, share knowledge, and reshape their surroundings in ways that create room for different rhythms and ways of living.
Rather than treating menopausing as a separate crisis or (non-)event, this research joins the project “Menopausing: Exploring diversity, awareness and activism” in approaching it as an ongoing transition that can involve both vulnerability and possibility. Experiences of menopausing vary considerably. For some, it may foster self-acceptance, new forms of embodiment and empowerment. For others, it may be marked by pain, dysphoria, loss or internalised shame. And a lot of people experience several of these dimensions simultaneously. This research focuses on these diverse experiences and asks how belonging and exclusion are shaped through everyday relationships, places, and rhythms of life.
The research employs intersectional feminism, feminist geography, critical phenomenology as well as critical disability studies, and queer and crip theories. Together, these frameworks offer radical approaches to the concept of normalcy, revealing how the boundaries between sick and healthy, abnormal and normal, accepted and rejected are fluid and constantly shifting.
Drawing on interviews, diary materials and contextual reading of policy documents and media representation in Finland and Estonia, the research foregrounds menopausing as a meaninful social, embodied and geographical experience. The research aims to illustrate how menopausing offers a particularly interesting lens through which to examine (un)belonging because it often unsettles dominant expectations around gender, age, health, productivity and embodiment.
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Meeri holds a master’s degree in arts in Humanities (Folkloristics) and has previously worked with different Estonian cultural organisations. Her past work includes research on Estonian urban nightlife during the 2000s, as well as exploring personal narrative experiences of Tartu’s nightlife in the 2020s.
You can read more about the ongoing research from:
