Scholars:
Kimmo Ahonen (University of Turku):
Kimmo Ahonen is a graduate of the University of Turku. He has worked as an
assistant in the Department of General History. Ahonen has been accepted
as a doctoral student of CLIOHRESnet Network of Excellence. His doctoral
thesis focuses on the cultural history of the United States in the
1950s. His principal research interest is the cultural history of
the Cold War, including film and science fiction. He is currently working
on the research project “Cinematic Cartographies of European History"
(funded by the Academy of Finland). His e-mail is: kimmo.ahonen(at)utu.fi
Johannes Brusila (Åbo Akademi University):
Johannes Brusila, Ph.D. is curator and director of the Sibelius Museum,
although he is currently working as the research director at the
Department of Musicology, Åbo Akademi University. His research interests
include popular music, the music industry, and cultural studies. Brusila
is the author of ‘Local Music, Not From Her: The Discourse of World
Music examined through three Zimbabwean case studies: The Bhundu Boys,
Virginia Mukwesha and Sunduza (Finnish Society for Ethnomusicology,
2003) and Finlandssvenskarnas musiksmak, musikupplevelser och
radiovanor (Oy Yleisradio Ab, 1994) and several articles. Current
research interests include the popular music of the Finland-Swedish
minority (as a member of The Society of Swedish Literature in Finland’s
project The Construction of Finland-Swedishness in Music).
Jelena Gligorijevic (University of Turku):
In her Ph.D. project Jelena will be exploring the issues of construction,
negotiation and representation of Serbian national identity through its
two major music festivals in times of the country's political transition
from dictatorship to democracy. One of them is the Exit festival, a
pro-Western popular music festival founded in Novi Sad in 2000, which
developed into the greatest international musical spectacle in South
Eastern Europe; and the other is the Guca trumpet festival held in the
town of Guca in the Dragacevo region of western Serbia since 1961 with the
aim of promoting what is regarded to be 'authentic' Serbian music
tradition and other Serbian 'brands' within national clothing, the food
and drink industry. Not only do these festivals reflect well the country's
division on two mutually opposed political, social and cultural tendencies
in post-communist Serbia (i.e. 'progressive', 'urban', 'pro-European'
versus 'conservative', 'rural' and 'nationalistic'), but they also serve
as a good starting point for examining a number of perspectives on the
relationship between the local and the global which plays a significant
role in the processes of establishing and negotiating Serbian national
identity.
Outi Hakola (University of Turku):
Outi Hakola, MA, works as a Researcher in Media Studies at the University
of
Turku. She is interested in popular cinema and television. Her PhD
work-in-progress deals with representational issues concerning death and
dying in the horror films, more specifically in the films with living
dead. Beside horror films and representations of violence in popular
cinema her research interests are Chinese cinema, audience research and
film criticism.
Benita Heiskanen (University of Turku):
Benita Heiskanen, Ph.D., works as a Collegium Researcher at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS), with an affiliation in Cultural History at the University of Turku. I am a scholar of American Studies with a broad interest in popular representations of race and ethnicity, immigration, sport, and violence/femicide in the Americas; theoretically, I have worked around issues of the body, space/place, and time. My current research project explores real life experiences and cultural responses to violence in the El Paso-Ciudad Juárez border region between the United States and Mexico. I have also written and theorized extensively about boxing from an interdisciplinary cultural studies perspective. My monograph, The Urban Geography of Boxing: Race, Class, and Gender in the Ring, is forthcoming from New York: Routledge in spring 2012. Based on ethnographic fieldwork and interviews conducted with Latino boxers, women boxers, and boxing insiders in Texas; the book discusses the power relations of boxing from the vantage point of these sundry players within the actual sites, such as the barrio, boxing gym, and competition venue, where the sport is organized. For more information on the book, please see the publisher’s website at http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415502269/.
Bruce Johnson (University of Turku/Macquarie University):
My interest in popular culture is as a way of tracing cultural
history since the medieval period, and in particular through the
field of acoustics: the role of sound in the confrontations which
generated modernity as mapped through such demarcations as class,
gender, nation state, race. This work involves such areas as
literacy and literature as an information economy competing with
sound, sound and visual technologies, the acoustics of the modern
city, and music. Particular current areas of research
include the history of the connections between music and
violence, popular music and sexuality, regional popular musics
especially jazz.
Kari Kallioniemi (University of Turku):
Docent of History of Popular Culture and Researcher in Cultural History at
the University of Turku, Finland. He is the author of Put the Needle on
the Record and Think of England: Notions of Englishness in the Post-war
History of British Pop Music (University of Turku, 1998). His contemporary
work deals with the eccentricity in British (pop)stardom. E-mail:
kakallio@utu.fi
Maiju Kannisto (University of Turku):
Maiju Kannisto, MA, works as a Researcher in Cultural History at the
University of Turku. Her PhD work-in-progress deals with the change in
branding of the television channels. The study is focused on how
commercial television channels in Finland have been constructing the
consumers. Consumer ideals and their construction strategies have become
particularly important in addressing target audiences in which
advertisers are interested. She works in multidisciplinary INTERMEDIA
project funded by Academy of Finland (further information at
www.uta.fi/laitokset/tiedotus/intermedia/index.html).
Antti-Ville Kärjä (University of Turku):
I work as Academy of Finland postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Musicology.
My current research project (1 Jan 2009–31 Dec 2011) deals with Popular
Music in Postcolonial Finland. In 2004–2008 I was attending to the post of senior lecturer
in musicology. I received my doctoral degree in 2005. Besides my current research, my interests
include music in audiovisual media, historiography of music, cultural industries, censorship,
and parody (cf. projects below; see also my profile on musicology's website). I am also interested
in cultural theory in general, and in the intellectual history of popular music studies and
ethnomusicology in particular. The most recent and forthcoming publications include an edited
volume in Finnish on popular music studies (Populaarimusiikin tutkimus, Vastapaino 2007),
an article on marketing popular music through computer games (in From Pac Man to Pop Music,
ed. K. Collins, Ashgate 2008), an article on music in comic strips (in Kulttuurintutkimus 2/2008),
and an article on the use of humour in the historiography of Finnish rap (forthcoming in
Migrating Music, eds. J. Toynbee & B. Dueck, Routledge 2011). I was appointed an adjunct
professor ("docent") of the study of audiovisual media music in the University of Tampere in 2007
and of popular music studies in the University of Helsinki in 2009.
Kimi Kärki (University of Turku):
Kimi Kärki works as a coordinator in a European master's programme
European Heritage, Digital Media and the Information Society. His PhD
work-in-progress is about the stadium rock stage design, stardom and
aesthetics. During 2006 he spent six months as a Research Fellow in
Institute of Popular Music, University of Liverpool, UK. He has written
articles and edited several books on cultural history, popular music
studies, and cultural integration. He is based to Department of Cultural
History, University of Turku, Finland. Visit his homepage at
http://users.utu.fi/kierka/
Anu Lahtinen (University of Turku):
Dr Anu Lahtinen works as a PostDoc Researcher in Cultural History at
the University of Turku. Her interests in popular culture are diverse.
As an expert in medieval and early modern Swedish history, she takes
interest in studying sixteenth century popular culture - handwritten
songbooks and anecdote collections, for example. When it comes to more
modern times, she is launching a research project on ironic dimensions
in the performance of the American talk show host Conan O'Brien.
Rami Mähkä (University of Turku):
MA Rami Mähkä is a researcher in Cultural History at the University of
Turku. He is especially interested in post-war British popular culture.
Mähkä is currently writing his doctoral thesis under a working title
“Monty Python, History and Comedy”. The study is part of the
research
project Cinematic Cartographies of European History, 1945-2000, funded by
the Finnish Academy. Email rami.mahka(at)utu.fi
Janne Mäkelä
(University of Helsinki):
Dr Janne Mäkelä is Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher in
the European Area and Cultural Studies of the Renvall Institute,
University of Helsinki. He is also adjunct professor (docent)
of history of popular culture in Cultural History, University of
Turku, where he completed his PhD in 2002. Mäkelä has written on
issues of popular culture, pop music and
stardom. His book John Lennon Imagined: Cultural History of a
Rock Star (Peter Lang, New York) was published in 2004. He is
currently writing a book on pursuits of international fame in
Finnish popular music from the early 1960s to the late 1990s. As
to his hobbies, Mäkelä is interested in crime (fiction only) and
making Balkanese/Turkish-influenced popular music. For more, see
http://www.helsinki.fi/hum/renvall/eka/staff_makela.html
Raita Merivirta (University of Turku/La Trobe University):
Raita is writing her doctoral thesis on the screen depictions of Michael
Collins and the Irish revolutionary period as part of the research project
Cinematic Cartographies of European History, 1945-2000, funded by
the
Academy of Finland. She is the author of a monograph entitled The Gun
and
Irish Politics: Examining National History in Neil Jordan's Michael
Collins (2009). Raita's other area of interest is Indian literature in
English, particularly the post-Midnight's Children novel-as-history trend
of the 1980s and 1990s.
Heta Mulari (University of Turku):
Heta Mulari’s (MA) ongoing doctoral research explores representations of
girlhood in Swedish youth films in 1995–2005. She is interested in how
these films have been circulated and referred to in media discussions
about new feminisms, education and youth activism. The main objective in
the research is to explore three intertwining cinematic images of Swedish
girlhood: a girl feminist, a girl consumer and a girl in need of
education. Heta’s research material consists of films, review journalism,
media pedagogical publications, third wave feminist publications and
commercial girls’ magazines. Her areas of research interest include
girlhood studies, history of feminism and cultural history of film and
media. She works in project Cinematic Cartographies of European History
1945–2000, funded by Academy of Finland.
Susanna Paasonen (University of Turku):
Susanna Paasonen works as professor of media studies and specializes in internet research, pornography, affect and popular media culture.
Most recently, she is the co-editor of Pornification (Berg 2007) and Working with affect in feminist readings (Routledge 2010),
as well as the author of Carnal resonance: Affect and online pornography (MIT Press 2011).
Mari Pajala (University of Turku):
Mari Pajala is a post doc researcher at Media Studies, University of
Turku, with funding from the Academy of Finland (2010–2012). Her current
research is concerned with television as a technology of cultural memory
and the circulation of old television in the contemporary Finnish
television culture. Pajala’s main research interests relate to feminist
media studies and Finnish television culture, particularly questions of
nationality, memory and affectivity. Her PhD research focused on the
Eurovision Song Contest, nationality and Finnish television history.
During the academic year 2009–2010 Pajala works as a visiting researcher
at Media and Culture Studies, Utrecht University. She is also a member of
the research project The Power of Culture in Producing Common Sense
(Academy of Finland 2007–2010).
Petri Paju (University of Turku):
Petri Paju is a post-doc researcher working in the project 'Using IBM in
Europe to recapture the lead? Co-constructing computer expertise in
Europe
and visions of European know-how through IBM and its technology', see
http://users.utu.fi/petpaju/ibm/. His doctoral dissertation (2008) deals
with history of information technology and nationalism in the 1950s
Finland: Building Ilmarinen's Finland: The Committee for Mathematical
Machines and computer construction as a national project in the 1950s
(in
Finnish). He has also written on how atomic technology in the mid-1950s
was
made a popular phenomenon.
Jussi Parikka (Anglia Ruskin University, UK/University of
Turku):
Jussi Parikka teaches and writes on the cultural theory and history of new
media. He studied cultural history at the university of Turku, Finland,
and
is currently Senior Lecturer in Media Studies, Anglia Ruskin University,
Cambridge, UK. Parikka has published a book on “cultural theory in the age
of digital machines”(Koneoppi, in Finnish) and his Digital
Contagions: A
Media Archaeology of Computer Viruses is published by Peter Lang, New
York, Digital Formations-series (2007). Parikka is currently working on a
book (“Insect Media”) which analyzes the conceptual and historical
intertwining of animals and technology. In addition, two co-edited books
are forthcoming: The Spam Book: On Viruses, Spam, and Other Anomalies
from
the Dark Side of Digital Culture and Media Archaeologies.
Parikka's homepage is
http://users.utu.fi/juspar
John Richardson (University of Turku):
John Richardson is professor of musicology at the University of Turku in Finland.
He has published on popular music, music and visual media, contemporary avant-garde music,
and Finnish music. He is author of the books, An Eye for Music: Popular Music and the Audiovisual Surreal
(Oxford University Press, forthcoming) and Singing Archaeology: Philip Glass’s Akhnaten
(Wesleyan University Press). He is presently co-editing two article collections, The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics
(with Claudia Gorbman and Carol Vernallis), and The Oxford Handbook of New Digital Media: Sound, Image, and Emerging Practices
(with Carol Vernallis and Amy Herzog). In popular music studies he has published on performers including Gorillaz, KT Tunstall and
Maija Vilkkumaa. He has contributed chapters to several existing and forthcoming collections, including
The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Musicology, Musicological Identities: Essays in Honour of
Susan McClary, Critical Musicological Reflections: Festschrift for Derek Scott, Music and the Idea of the North, Peter Gabriel,
From Genesis to Growing Up, and The Ashgate Research Companion to Minimalist and Post-Minimal Music.
For further bibliographical details, see http://www.hum.utu.fi/oppiaineet/musiikkitiede/en/richardson.html.
Hannu Salmi (University of Turku):
Hannu Salmi works as professor of cultural history at the University of
Turku. He has written especially on film and media history, music
history and the history of the nineteenth century.
He is currently
working on a book Nineteenth-Century Europe: A Cultural History
(Cambridge: Polity, 2008) and is starting a project on the history of time
travel.
Jukka Sihvonen (University of Turku):
Jukka Sihvonen works as the professor of cinema studies at the School of
Art Studies. Currently he is finishing a study on the two film adaptations
(from 1955 and 1985) based on the hugely popular war novel written by
Väinö Linna and published in 1954 called Tuntematon sotilas (The
Unknown
Soldier). His research interests include topics from film history and
theory to media philosophy and education, and most recently problems of
adaptation. Attached to these another work in progress is a study on the
cinema of David Cronenberg with the title In the Lab of Desire.
Projects:
Cinematic Cartographies of European History, 1945–2000
In his film Goodbye Lenin (2003), the German director Wolfgang
Becker described nostalgically the fall of the Berlin Wall in November
1989: that historical event brought down the curtain on an era that would
never return – except on the silver screen. Filmmakers have, in general,
been active in describing historical turning points and memories. The aim
of this project is to focus on the cinematic depiction of European history
after World War II. The project has two foundational premises. The
first one is to analyze historical films in conjunction with contemporary
films that depict their own time. In recent literature on film and
history, there has been an obvious concentration on historical film. The
other basic premise is that cinematic history of Europe should not be
solely examined in terms of plotlines, narrative forms or textual
interpretations. An interesting problem lies in the fact that, even though
history is often conceived as a question of temporality, it has also been
described in spatial terms. The sense of history is created in a spatial
way, not by being somewhere in time but by being in a particular place.
The project Cinematic Cartographies of European History, 1945–2000
gained its inspiration from Tom Conley’s groundbreaking volume
Cartographic Cinema (2007). Conley argues that cinema, like
cartography,
is a locational machinery. The film in itself creates boundaries,
transgresses borders, navigates in space, excludes some places by
portraying others, and shows places to identify with. Following these
thoughts, the project asks: what kind of maps of Europe have been drawn by
filmmakers since 1945, how have these cinematic cartographies shaped
visions of European history and what kind of reference points have they
given for the imagination of the spectators?
The project concentrates
on fiction film in particular, and conducts empirical research over a wide
area, including American, British, Finnish, French, German, Irish,
Italian, Russian, Spanish and Swedish cinemas after World War II. In
addition to filmic material, the scholars draw on archival documents,
letters, scripts, press releases, stills, posters and censorship records,
as well as on public discourses, newspaper columns, interviews, reviews,
and magazines.
Project leader: Prof. Hannu Salmi. Researchers: Kimmo
Ahonen, Petteri Halin, Raita Merivirta-Chakrabarti, Heta Mulari, Rami
Mähkä, Lauri Piispa. Funded by the Academy of Finland, 2009–2012.
Project website::
Click here
Cultural Industries in Finland 1945 - 2000: Concepts, Practices,
Values
In the project the circumstances in which the concept of 'cultural
industries' has changed from negative to positive in post-WW2 Finland
are examined. The changes that have taken place will be analysed from
three different stances: 1) Concepts. How has 'cultural industry' been
defined in different times, and by whom? 2) Practices. Which forms of
agency and interrelations are involved in the production of objects
that are associated with 'cultural industry'? 3) Values. How are the
practices justified? For additional information please contact PhD
Antti-Ville Kärjä (see also the project profile on musicology's
website). The launch of the project in 2007 has been funded by the
Wihuri Foundation. In 13–14 June 2007 a conference entitled
In Search
of Cultural Industries was organised in the Renvall Institute in the
University of Helsinki.
The Starnet: Changing Discourses of Popular Music Stardom
(funded by the Academy of Finland, 2005-2008)
The Starnet project deals with the relationship between
the
star phenomenon and popular music. The main questions of the
project are: How is popular music stardom constructed at specific
historical moments? What kind of meanings popular music stars
incorporate? Stardom is characterised by different media-oriented
public actions which form a web-like texture. The project calls
this discursion the starnet. In order to understand traditions
and changes in this discursion, as well as the triumph of stardom
in the latter part of twentieth-century, the project produces
three studies. Docent Kari Kallioniemi examines the
democratization of eccentricism in British stardom and popular
music. MA Kimi Kärki focuses on Anglo-American stage designing
and the multifaceted relationship between “stadium rock stardom”
and technology. Dr Janne Mäkelä explores how Finland’s quest for
international popular music stardom in the late twentieth-century
was connected to globalisation processes and national identity.
Kallioniemi and Mäkelä have acquired partial funding for their
sub-projects.
