GENDER STUDIES

UNIVERSITY OF TURKU, FINLAND

Objectives

About “Research in the subject of gender studies”:

  • The research profile and focus area of ​​gender studies at the University of Turku are in the humanities and especially in the study of culture and the arts and history. Along with feminist media research, trans and queer research can be seen in ongoing projects.
  • The intersectional approach, which examines the simultaneity and overlapping of differences, is typical of a large part of Turku University’s gender research. Subjects of research in the subject include media representations and journalism, the politics of emotions, digital vulnerabilities, the history of sexuality, memory and artwork.

Research and results

  • Timelines of Academic Feminism in Finland (TAFF) (Marianne Liljeström, 2012-2016).
  • Localizing Feminist New Materialisms (Taru Leppänen, 2017-2021).
  • Flows of power: media as site and agent of politics, FLOPO (Anu Koivunen, 2019-2022). Project website: flopo.rahtiapp.fi
  • The age of cultural television: the second history of Finnish television 1975–1985 (Anu Koivunen, 2018-2022).

Ongoing projects

  • Trans*Creative: Health, Violence, and Environment in Transgender Cultural Production (Lotta Kähkönen, 2021–2024).
  • Politicized Intimacies, Intimacy in Data-driven Culture (Anu Koivunen, 2019–2022, 2022–2025).
  • Sexuality and democracy: Exploring the links and re-thinking the concepts for Feminist politics (Katja Kahlina).
  • Estonian-Finnish Lesbian Networks at the Early 1990s: Remembered and Narrated Transnational Connections (Riikka Taavetti and Rebeka Põldsam).
  • Embodied reproductive politics, arts-based methods, and the former Conservative Laestadian women (Teija Rantala, 2021-2023).
  • The future of the forest: Engendering environmental politics in the Białowieża Forest, Poland (Olga Cielemecka).
  • Political feelings and their objects. Right to Be -citizens initiative and the new trans law as shared through social media (Valo Vähäpassi).

Ongoing doctoral studies:

  • Interstitial politics of (a) bodying, corpo-affectiveness, and change (Anastasia Khodyreva).
  • The material-discursive practices that enable the slaughter of production animals in Finland (Tiina Ollila).
  • The spirit of feminism. Women’s empowerment and social change in the new spirituality of the 21st century (Ella Poutiainen).
  • «It happened to me almost exactly as it happens in the film» – embodied authorship, autofictive film, and marginalized perspectives (Saara Tuusa).
  • SF Practices and Kin Literacy Across Art and Activist Knowledge Production (Nóra Ugron).
  • Navigating digital intimacies in the age of deplatforming sex (Maria Vihlman).