Researchers
Adjunct professor Jyrki Pöysä is working as a researcher at the Karelian Institute, at the University of Eastern Finland. Pöysä is leading the Academy of Finland research project “Russia as a field and an Archive” (2017-2021). Pöysä’s main research interests include narrative studies, oral history, and archives. Among his numerous research topics, Pöysä has studied workplace culture, forest workers’ culture, the cultural significance of historical loggers in Finnish society and contemporary Karelian culture (research based on his own fieldwork in Russian Karelia between 1999-2017).
Recent publications:
Nationalism(s) and Finnish Folklore Studies – A Narrative View Gábor Gyáni ja Anssi Halmesvirta (toim.) Cultural Nationalism in a Finnish-Hungarian Historical Context. Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2018.
with Urpo Kovala: The ‘jytky’ of the Finns party: or, how to take advantage of masculinity in populist politics. In Kovala, Urpo & Palonen, Emilia & Ruotsalainen, Maria & Saresma, Tuija (eds.): Populism on the loose. 2018. (https://jyx.jyu.fi/handle/123456789/57477).
with Urpo Kovala: Jätkä ja jytky populistisena retoriikkana ja performanssina. In Emilia Palonen and Tuija Saresma (eds.): Jätkät ja jytkyt : Perussuomalaiset ja populismin retoriikka
PhD Helena Lonkila is a postdoctoral researcher at the Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland as well as a university teacher at Culture Environment Studies and Museology at the Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies, Jyväskylä University.
Helena Lonkila has studied the formation of national cultural heritage, karelianism and the materiality of cultural heritage.
In her dissertation Lonkila applied a method combining the frameworks of cultural semiotic and historical thought, as well as examined the articulation of national category (Finnishness) in interactions on levels both micro and macro. The research was based both on field work among the Karelians and on museum and archival materials collected during the 19th and 20th centuries.
In her recent research Lonkila has focused on the question of the heterochronia of cultural environment and cultural heritage.
PhD Karina Lukin is a postdoctoral researcher in Folklore Studies, University of Helsinki.
She has studied Nenets contemporary narratives and oral histories, as well as Nenets mythology and shamanism. Her studies are based both on fieldwork among the Nenets and on archival materials collected during the 19th and 20th centuries. Lukin has recently turned her attention to questions of research history and the relationships between folklore, literature, and heritage.
PhD Elina Niiranen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland.
She has studied Karelian folksongs and oral histories and has done fieldwork in Russian Karelia and Tanzania. Her studies are based on fieldwork among the Karelians and on archival materials collected during the 20th and 21st centuries. Niiranen has recently focused on questions of identity and representations of Karelian culture in folksongs and narratives.
PhD Tiina Seppä is a postdoctoral researcher in Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland. Her dissertation (2015) focuses on the collecting and producing project of folk poetry in Finland. In her ongoing research she is examining the processes and the material and immaterial conditions of national romanticism and nation-making through the folklore collecting project.
The project Russia as a Field and Archive in collaboration with the Academy of Finland:
