CERLI, Centre for Research on Learning and Instruction, and CELE, Centre for Research on Lifelong Learning and Education, present one researcher each month. In March Academy Research Fellow Marjaana Puurtinen from CERLI takes the spotlight.
In my "Eye at History" project (Research Council of Finland, 2021-2026), I study how history professionals and enthusiasts view and interpret the past when it is presented through images, virtual reality or museum exhibitions. In my research, I use the eye-tracking method that allows me to record how a historian looks at an image or a museum visitor explores an exhibition space. In this way, I can capture how the gaze proceeds with a precision that the viewer would not be able to describe themselves. However, the method only tells you where you are looking and it does not directly reveal anything about what the viewer sees in an object or what they think about it. In order to find out what kind of interpretations are made of the images or museum exhibitions, I ask my research participants for written answers to the given task, or I interview them. In my research, I use both quantitative and qualitative analysis methods.
Exploring this topic is important because images from the past surround us all, whether we are professionals or enthusiasts. We binge-watch historical TV series, share history-themed memes on social media, and play video games inspired by past worlds. It is important to become aware of the different ways in which such imagery is received and what kind of perceptions of the past are formed through it.
In the everyday life of a researcher, my working days include a lot of scheduling. In a large personal project with many sub-projects and each with slightly different colleagues, there are always a dozen research reports in progress, related team meetings and a lot of reading and writing (and re-reading and re-writing). In addition, I have meetings about postgraduate education matters, supervise theses and coordinate the University of Turku's eye-tracking laboratory, Turku EyeLabs, with my colleagues.
I cooperate in quite a few directions. My most important collaborators are all the nearly two hundred volunteers from all over Finland who have participated in my research – without them, this project would not exist. Other important partners include the Turku Museum Centre, the Muisti Centre for War and Peace (Mikkeli) and the Helsinki City Museum. My closest research partners can be found at the Department of Teacher Education at the University of Turku, among eye-tracking researchers in the discipline of psychology at the same university, in the discipline of philosophy at the University of Oulu and among computer science experts at the University of Eastern Finland. My research moves in between quite a few disciplines.
When I'm not researching, I play folk music and hang out with my family. I like to immerse myself in jamming or rehearsing with others, in composing and in rearranging songs that are 100-200 years old. For me, research is first and foremost creative work, and I feel that my research benefits when I sometimes create something completely different. As a counterbalance to all the hustle and bustle, I do big puzzles or burn branches in my backyard.
My greetings to those working in learning and teaching research: I feel that it is a privilege to do work where the task is to think about the world in different ways and at the same time learn more all the time. At its core, our work is full of optimism and hope: we accept incompleteness and persistently strive for better. Not a bad job, I’d say!
Researcher of the Month is a joint publication series of the Faculty of Education's Centres for Research CERLI and CELE, presenting one researcher once a month. The previously published presentations have been compiled on the series' website.
