Johanna
Ilmakunnas
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Areas of expertise
Biography
From August 2018 I have held a tenured position as an associate professor of Nordic History at Åbo Akademi University.
I acted as professor of Finnish history at the University of Turku 2016–2018.
I'm docent (adjunct professor) of Finnish and European history at the University of Turku since 2015.
I’m docent (adjunct professor) of European history at the University of Helsinki since 2015.
From 2016 to 2019 I'm acting as adjunct associate professor at the University of Luxembourg.
From 2013 to 2016 I held at the University of Helsinki a major postdoctoral grant from the Academy of Finland for the project ‘Diligent aristocracy: Nobility, service and work in Sweden, from the Great Northern War to the Napoleonic Wars’.
From 2012 to 2014 I was visiting research fellow at the University of Northampton.
Before entering academia, I worked a decade in scholarly and academic publishing at the Finnish Literature Society.
Research
My research interests include material culture, consumption, lifestyle, work and leisure, family and gender history as well as history of elites in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Finland and Europe.
I have published on consuming practices, credit and debt, private economy of elite families, handicrafts and shopping, life at country house and in town, food culture and work of servants. My currently research topic is Crafting the Everyday: Sensory and Gendered Handiwork in Northern Europe, c. 1700–1850. I'm currently also writing a book-length study on elites and work in eighteenth century.
My publications include Early Professional Women in Northern Europe, c. 1650–1850 (2017, edited with Marjatta Rahikainen and Kirsi Vainio-Korhonen), A Taste for Luxury in Early Modern Europe: Display, Acquisition and Boundaries (2017, edited with Jon Stobart), ‘Embroidering women & turning men: Handiwork, gender and emotions in Sweden and Finland, c. 1720–1820’ in Scandinavian Journal of History 41:3 (2016), the special issue on eighteenth-century cultural history in Historisk Tidskrif för Finland 100:4 (2015, edited with Charlotta Wolff) and a major study on the consumption and lifestyle of Swedish aristocracy in the eighteenth century Ett ståndsmässigt liv. Släkten von Fersens livstil på 1700-tal (2012), as well as a number of other articles, co-edited volumes and monographs.
I am also editor for Historiallinen Aikakauskirja, editor for the open access yearbook Sjuttonhundratal – Nordic Yearbook for Eighteenth-Century Studies, member of the board for open access history journal Historisk Tidskrift för Finland and member of the editorial board for the series Crossing Boundaries: Turku Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Amsterdam University Press.