Academy Research Fellow Kati Kallio Appointed as Senior Researcher at the Finnish Literature Society
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Doctor of Philosophy Kati Kallio is a distinguished folklorist specializing in the study of historical oral cultures. She enjoys working in multidisciplinary environments and is committed to making cultural heritage accessible and comprehensible to diverse audiences.
As a Senior Researcher at the Finnish Literature Society (SKS), Kallio will conduct research related to folklore and cultural heritage, as well as develop and lead projects particularly connected to SKS’s archival collections. Her work will also include planning and implementing science communication, collaborating with SKS departments and the Society’s stakeholders, and managing administrative tasks within the Research Department.
Dr. Kallio holds the title of Docent at the University of Helsinki. She currently works as an Academy Research Fellow at the Finnish Literature Society and supervises doctoral dissertations at the University of Helsinki and the Sibelius Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Her research has focused especially on Ingrian, Karelian, and Finnish oral traditions, examining them from perspectives such as performance, genre, poetic metre, intertextuality, and processes of literarisation and modernisation. In recent years, Kallio has concentrated on developing methods for large-scale digital folklore corpora in close collaboration with computer scientists, folklorists and linguists in Finland and Estonia. She is also interested in the roles of minorities in humanistic research, in environmental conceptions reflected in oral traditions, and in the uses and re-interpretations of these in contemporary culture.
Since 2002, Kallio has worked at SKS and various universities in projects funded by cultural foundations and the Academy of Finland, most recently as the leader of the FILTER consortium, which developed digital perspectives on the study of Finnic runosongs. She is currently leading the project “Variation in the Form and Content of Finnic Oral Poetry in Relation to Linguistic and Ethnic History” (IKAKE, 2024–2028), funded by the Kone Foundation.
“Over the past sixteen years, the Research Department of SKS has been developed into a wonderful multidisciplinary community. For me, the Society’s archive and library are an inexhaustible treasure trove, and unique materials and expertise can also be found in other institutions in Finland and its neighbouring regions. It is fantastic to be able to continue conducting research as well as to develop, support, popularize, and build networks for collaboration on a more long-term basis.”
Kallio will begin her work as Senior Researcher on 1 September 2026, after the conclusion of her Academy Research Fellow project.
