Marianne Vasara-Aaltonen defended her doctoral dissertation in 2017 at the University of Helsinki on the studies abroad of early modern Swedish lawyers. Her interests are especially in the history of legal education, history of professions, history of the court system and the history of legal reception. In this project, Vasara-Aaltonen works as a postdoctoral researcher preparing articles on the legal literacy of laymen functioning at Finnish town courts in the nineteenth century. One of the articles focuses on the legal knowledge lay advocates had obtained and on their activities at the town courts, while the other articles discuss lay town court members: representatives of the burghers, without formal legal education.