SELMA: Centre for the Study of Storytelling, Experientiality, and Memory celebrates 10-year anniversary

SELMA’s anniversary celebrations took place in Sibelius Museum with opening words from directors Senior Lecturer in Cultural History Maarit Leskelä-Kärki and Professor of Comparative Literature Hanna Meretoja.

The research centre SELMA explores the interrelations between storytelling, experientiality and memory. The Centre is based at the School of History, Culture and Arts Studies at the University of Turku, Finland.

– When SELMA was founded in early June 2015, the world looked quite different. Today, it feels as though we are living in a time of a vanishing world. Many things we once took for granted – such as how society should function – are undergoing profound transformation, Leskelä-Kärki said in her opening words.

– In light of this, it is more important than ever that we, as scholars, academics, and artists, remain active on many fronts. We must come together to make sense of the world, engage with the past, and seek pathways toward the future.

SELMA’s research foci include life-writing, narratives of illness and health, environmental narratives, trauma narratives, transcultural memory, and digital storytelling. The research centre explores the intersections of narrative, experience and memory from both theoretical and historical perspectives.

SELMA promotes interdisciplinary research and organises seminars, symposia and other events on both theoretical and topical social issues. We aim at crossing the borders between research and artistic creativity by creating dialogue, promoting social engagement and fostering international collaboration between scholars, artists and other people outside academia.

Together with collegues from various disciplines Meretoja and Leskelä-Kärki were involved in establishing a centre dedicated to fostering collaboration between history, art, culture, and life writing studies. SELMA has organised big international conferences, starting with the Ethics of Storytelling in 2015, World Congress of the International Auto/Biography Association in 2022 and the Narrative Matters conference in 2023.

SELMA has a long tradition of exploring the intersection of art and science, particularly through Aboagora – Between Arts and Sciences.

Meretoja thanked partners of collaboration, such as research centres Narrare in Finland and many centres and networks abroad, such as the IABA community, Oxford Centre for Life-writing, the Narrative and Memory network she ran with Eneken Laanes.

– A particularly important partner for us is the strategic multidisciplinary theme of the university of Turku, Cultural Memory and social change. It felt like an important achievement when the university chose this particular theme which is so central to the work we do in SELMA. Thank you for Cultural Memory and Social Change for also co-organising this event with us.

Keynote lecture for the 10-year anniversary was given by Research Director Matti Hyvärinen. He is the previous vice-director of the Research Centre Narrare (2014–2023) at the Tampere University, a close collaborator of SELMA. Recently, Hyvärinen has co-edited the special issue “Considering political counter-narrative” for Narrative Works.

The programme continued with a roundtable discussion The Significance of Narratives in the Current World Political Situation chaired by Meretoja. Participants were Pertti Grönholm, European and World History; Benita Heiskanen, North American Studies; Anne Heimo, Folkloristics; Tiina Lintunen, Political History; and Liisa Merivuori, Comparative Literature.

Finally, songwriter, performer, writer and researcher Astrid Swan gave a lecture and a beautiful performance called …grief plays me like a broken string instrument.

Congratulations to 10-year-old SELMA!

Some of SELMA’s current projects:

• Counter-Narratives of Cancer: Shaping Narrative Agency by Hanna Meretoja
• Reading Recovery: Narratives of Recovery in Culture, Medicine, and Society by Avril Tynan
• Narrative Agency Reading Group Model: Applications for Libraries, Schools and Hospitals by Hanna Meretoja
• A grove of stories – Sagalund, Home museum, environment and biographical time by Maarit Leskelä-Kärki
• The Changing Roles of Literature in Society by Markku Lehtimäki
• Intersectional Reading, Social Justice and Literary Activism by Kaisa Ilmonen.

Updated 19 June 2025: Added information about the establishment of the centre.