Jukka Siikala is Professor Emeritus of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Helsinki. Specializing on the Pacific since the mid-1970s, Siikala has conducted extensive ethnographic fieldwork in the Cook Islands first in 1983-1984, later in the 1980s and 1990s as well as fieldwork with Cook Island migrants in New Zealand.

Central themes in Siikala's research are the focus on culture and textuality, for example recitation and recording of genealogies, and interactions between indigenous hierarchies, state institutions and the global system. He has edited a number of volumes, such as Departures: How Societies Distribute their People (2001) and published a multitude of articles internationally and in Finnish. He is the author of two monographs of the Cook Islands, Akatokamanāva: Myth, History and Society in the Southern Cook Islands (1991) and Return to Culture: Oral Tradition and Society in the Southern Cook Islands (2005) together with Anna-Leena Siikala.