Find a researcher
Are you interested in Finnish literature, culture, history, language and cultural heritage?
Here you can find researchers at the Finnish Literature Society and their fields of expertise. For more information, please check the links to the researchers’ profile pages.
Researchers at SKS:
Researcher Eeva-Liisa Bastman, PhD, Title of Docent
literature and history
Areas of expertise:
• early modern Swedish and Finnish Literature
• occasional poetry and hymns
• theory and research of lyric poetry
• poetics, rhetoric and metrics
• 17th- and 18th-century literary culture
• history of literature
Profile
Senior Archivist Risto Blomster, PhD, Title of Docent
ethnomusicology
Areas of expertise:
• Roma cultural heritage and archives
• folk music materials in the archives
Profile (in Finnish)
Director of Archives Outi Hupaniittu, PhD
history
Areas of expertise:
• Finnish cinema history and film culture
• film production and economics, actors, publicity, stardom
• archival studies and theory, private archives, acquisition policies and digitalization
Profile (in Finnish)
Director of the Kalevala Society Niina Hämäläinen, PhD, Title of Docent
folklore studies
Areas of expertise:
• Finnic oral poetry
• Kalevala and Kanteletar
• critical editions
• textualization
• cultural history of emotions and family
Profile (in Finnish)
Researcher Anni Jääskeläinen, PhD, Title of Docent
Finnish language
Areas of expertise:
• linguistic animal studies
• ecolinguistics
• construction grammar
• cognitive linguistics
• sound symbolism
• particle-like words
• academic writing
• editing and grammar
Profile
Academy Research Fellow Kati Kallio, PhD, Title of Docent
folklore studies
Areas of expertise:
• Finnic oral poetry (runosongs, Kalevalaic poetry, regilaul)
• performance, genre and intertextuality
• poetics, poetic metre and music
• interaction of oral and literary traditions
Profile
Researcher Hanna Karhu, PhD, Title of Docent
literature
Areas of expertise:
• connections between folklore and literature
• modern literary manuscripts
• use of archival materials in literature studies
• genetic criticism
• study of poetry
• Finnish poetry at the turn of the 1800s and 1900s
• poet Otto Manninen’s early production
Profile
Managing Editor Sakari Katajamäki, PhD, Title of Docent
literature
Areas of expertise:
• textual criticism, textual scholarship, genetic criticism, scholarly editing
• multidisciplinary relations between literary criticism, translation studies and textual scholarship
• Aleksis Kivi, Lauri Viita, and Samuel Gustaf Bergh
• poetry and poetics
• literary avant-garde and experimental literature
• digital humanities
Profile
PhD Researcher Henna Keränen, MA
literature
Areas of expertise:
• 19th-century Finnish literature: Minna Canth, Samuel Gustaf Bergh, Zacharias Topelius, Aleksis Kivi
• naturalism
• manuscript studies and genetic criticism
Profile
Head of Collections Katri Kivilaakso, PhD
literature
Areas of expertise:
• authors’ personal archives
• archival collections in literary studies
• history of literature
• queer studies
• author Pirkko Saisio
Profile (in Finnish)
Research Director Ville Kivimäki, PhD, Title of Docent
history
Areas of expertise:
• experience, emotions and memory in the humanities
• trauma theory and cultural trauma
• history of nationalism and nationhood
• social and cultural history of World War II and its aftermath
• gender history, especially war and masculinity
• history of psychiatry and psychology
• dreams and nightmares
Profile
Researcher Karolina Kouvola, PhD
religious studies
Areas of expertise:
• vernacular healing
• cultural memory
• Swedish-language vernacular religion in Finland
Profile
Secretary General, Professor Tuomas M. S. Lehtonen
history
Areas of expertise:
• relations of oral and literary culture in early modern Baltic Sea region
• medieval history and latin literature
• medieval and early modern historiography
• rhetoric and poetics
Profile (in Finnish)
Communications Director Kati Mikkola, PhD, Title of Docent
religious and folklore studies
Areas of expertise:
• nationalism and nation-building
• secularizarion and the changing religiousness
• collection policies in the archives
• self-taught folklore collectors
• modernization and oppisition to novelties in 19th-century Finland
• religion and ethics as school subjects, their history and curricula
Profile (in Finnish)
Researcher Heidi Henriikka Mäkelä, PhD, Title of Docent
folklore studies
Areas of expertise:
• Kalevala-metric poetry and runo song in contemporary contexts
• concepts of intangible cultural heritage and folk tradition
• intangible cultural heritage and folk music
• landscape and visual discourses of cultural heritage
• medievalism, new spirituality
Profile
Researcher Kirsi-Maria Nummila, PhD, Title of Docent
Finnish language
Areas of expertise:
• old literary Finnish, 16th–18th century texts and textual practices
• history of Finnish language, its usage and change
• Finnish vocabulary and word formation
• language contacts, translation and multilingual practices
• scientific writing and text edition
Profile
Researcher Sanna Nyqvist, PhD, Title of Docent
literature
Areas of expertise:
• islands and seashores in literature
• authorship and copyrights
• various forms of imitation and reproduction
• Nobel Prize in Literature
• translations and translation criticism
• popularizing research
Profile
Researcher and Data Specialist Hanna-Leena Paloposki, PhD
art history
Areas of expertise:
• 19th-century Finnish art field, artists’ networks and epistolary culture
• archival studies
• exhibition studies
• Finland and Italy: the cultural field and cultural relations in the 1920s and 1930s
Profile
Senior Researcher Ilona Pikkanen, PhD, Title of Docent
history
Areas of expertise:
• history culture in the 19th century
• letter collections
• digital humanities
• historical fiction
• historiography
Profile
Researcher Veli-Matti Pynttäri, PhD
literature
Areas of expertise:
• digital methods
• essayistic literature
• interwar literature and culture in Finland
• genre
Profile
PhD Researcher Sofia Silfvast, MA
religious studies
Areas of expertise:
• Orthodox Karelia
• lived religion
• oral history research
• archive materials
Profile
Researcher Viliina Silvonen, PhD
folklore studies and ethnomusicology
Areas of expertise:
• Karelian laments
• performance, practice, genre
• emotions and affects
• archive materials
• cooperation between the arts and research
Profile (in Finnish)
Development Manager Eija Stark, PhD, Title of Docent
folklore studies
Areas of expertise:
• folkloristic approaches to history
• history of the national sciences (esp. folklore studies and ethnology)
• social change and narrative culture
• research on social class
• proverbs and storytelling
Profile (in Finnish)
Researcher Sanna Supponen, PhD
history
Areas of expertise:
• Birgittines, Vadstena Abbey
• late-medieval theological literature, sermon literature
• reception history and use of texts
• paratexts, textual composition, mise-en-page
• manuscript fragments
• research databases
Profile
Researcher Venla Sykäri, PhD, Title of Docent
folklore studies
Areas of expertise:
• performance, composition and aesthetics of oral poetry
• lyrical improvisation in contemporary cultures (freestyle rap, contest poetry)
• 19th-century Finnic runosong data (SKVR)
• Elias Lönnrot’s use of the oral poetry sources (runosong) in the Kalevala
Profile
PhD Researcher Topi Vainikainen, MA
theatre research
Areas of expertise:
• Finnish drama and theatre
• dramaturgy
• public history, memory culture
• “Taistoism”
• Pirkko Saisio, Laura Ruohonen
Profile
PhD Researcher Mari Viita-aho, MEd
museology
Areas of expertise:
• museums’ societal agency
• exhibition studies
• museum pedagogy
• artist and home museums
Profile
Researcher Katri Vuola, PhD
art history
Areas of expertise:
• medieval art and material culture / materiality of religion
• medieval polychrome sculptures and altarpiece
• technical art history
• ecclesiastical cultural heritage and material life cycles
Profile