Areas of Expertise
- Ethnology in Finland in the 1930s and during the Second World War
- History of Knowledge
- Science communication
I work as a research coordinator of the Center of Excellence in Nationalism Research in the Humanities (NARS) at the Finnish Literature Society. My upcoming dissertation in the field of ethnology, tentatively titled The Production and Use of Ethnological Knowledge in Wartime Finland, examines the production, circulation, and use of ethnological knowledge in Finland during the 1930s and wartime.
In my research, I examine, for example, the funding of ethnological research, the everyday lives of ethnologists – particularly women ethnologists – conducting fieldwork in the occupied territories during the Continuation War, and newspaper articles written by ethnologists about their wartime work and experiences. My source material consists of fieldwork reports, diaries, letters, and minutes of meetings found in the archives of the Finnish Literature Society, the Finnish Heritage Agency, the National Museum of Finland, the Finnish Cultural Foundation, and the Institute for the Languages of Finland, as well as newspaper clippings and other materials that shed light on ethnological research of the time. My background is in science communication.
Selected publications:
Kähkönen, Sanna. 2026. “Following the Money – Ethnological Research and its Funding in Finland 1930–1945”. In Konrad J. Kuhn, Hanna Snellman and Lauri Turpeinen (eds.): Contested Knowledge – Political Dimensions of European Ethnology and Folklore Studies in Post-War Europe, 131–152. Studia Fennica Ethnologica, SKS.
Kähkönen, Sanna. 2025. “Following the Victors”? Uncertainties in Defining the Societal Influence of Ethnological Knowledge in Wartime Finland 1941–1944. Cultural Analysis, Volume 23.1., 2025. Open access: https://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~culturalanalysis/volume23_1/vol23_1_kahkonen.html
