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:
Eeva-Liisa Bastman, PhD, Docent
Researcher
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
Risto Blomster, PhD, Docent
Senior Archivist
ethnomusicology
Areas of expertise:
• Roma cultural heritage and archives
• folk music materials in the archives
Profile (in Finnish)
Outi Hupaniittu, PhD
Director of Archives
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)
Niina Hämäläinen, PhD, Docent
Director of the Kalevala Society
folklore studies
Areas of expertise:
• Finnic oral poetry
• Kalevala and Kanteletar
• critical editions
• textualization
• cultural history of emotions and family
Profile (in Finnish)
Anni Jääskeläinen, PhD, Docent
Researcher
Finnish language
Areas of expertise:
• linguistic animal studies
• ecolinguistics
• construction grammar
• cognitive linguistics
• sound symbolism
• particle-like words
• academic writing
• editing and grammar
Profile
Kati Kallio, PhD, Docent
Academy Research Fellow
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
Hanna Karhu, PhD, Docent
Senior Researcher
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
Sakari Katajamäki, PhD, Docent
Managing Editor
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
Henna Keränen, MA
PhD Researcher
literature
Areas of expertise:
• 19th-century Finnish literature: Minna Canth, Samuel Gustaf Bergh, Zacharias Topelius, Aleksis Kivi
• naturalism
• manuscript studies and genetic criticism
Profile
Katri Kivilaakso, PhD
Head of Collections
literature
Areas of expertise:
• authors’ personal archives
• archival collections in literary studies
• history of literature
• queer studies
• author Pirkko Saisio
Profile (in Finnish)
Ville Kivimäki, PhD, Docent
Research Director
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
Laura Kokko, MA and MMus
PhD Researcher
cultural history
Areas of expertise:
• author Volter Kilpi
• biographical research
• history of experience and the cultural history of disability
• reception studies and the formation of literary reputation
• cultural memory
Profile
Karolina Kouvola, PhD
Researcher
religious studies
Areas of expertise:
• vernacular healing
• cultural memory
• Swedish-language vernacular religion in Finland
Profile
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)
Kati Mikkola, PhD, Docent
SKS Secretary General
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)
Heidi Henriikka Mäkelä, PhD, Docent
Researcher
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
Hanneriina Moisseinen, MA
Artist and Doctoral Student
Artistic research
Areas of expertise:
• comic book research
• spatiality
• Karelias and Karelian identities
• combining arts and research
Profile
Kirsi-Maria Nummila, PhD, Docent
Senior Researcher
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
Sanna Nyqvist, PhD, Docent
Researcher
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
Mika Pylsy, PhD
Researcher
literature
Areas of expertise:
• Ingrian Finns
• literatures of the Finnish diaspora
• Finnish–Russian literary and cultural relations
• The Years of Oppression 1899–1917
• modernism
Profile
Veli-Matti Pynttäri, PhD
Researcher
literature
Areas of expertise:
• digital methods
• essayistic literature
• interwar literature and culture in Finland
• genre
Profile
Anni Reuter, D.Soc.Sc.
Researcher
sociology and history
Areas of expertise:
• deportations and diaspora of the Ingrian Finns
• Finns in Stalin’s purges
• ethnic minorities, integration, inclusion, racism, marginalization
• oral history, memory culture, counter-narratives and silent resistance
Profile
Sofia Silfvast, MA
PhD Researcher
religious studies
Areas of expertise:
• Orthodox Karelia
• lived religion
• oral history research
• archive materials
Profile
Viliina Silvonen, PhD
Researcher
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)
Eija Stark, PhD, Docent
Development Manager
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)
Sanna Supponen, PhD
Researcher
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
Venla Sykäri, PhD, Docent
Senior Researcher
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
Mari Viita-aho, PhD
Researcher
museology
Areas of expertise:
• museums’ societal agency
• exhibition studies
• museum pedagogy
• artist and home museums
Profile