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Areas of expertise
Biography
I obtained my PhD (UTU) in 1999, and I have taught at the University of Turku since 1991. In May 2015, I was appointed Professor of Cultural History. Even though the number of years that I have spent at the Department is quite high, I have been on a leave of absence for research purposes for over ten years, working in two projects funded by the Academy of Finland (PI Veikko Litzen), after which I have conducted my own postdoctoral project and worked as Academy Research Fellow. During these years of research leave, I had the wonderful opportunity to work abroad: a year at the UCLA and similarly a year at the University College London (which was then known as the Wellcome Institute) and shorter periods in, for example, Liverpool, the Warburg Institute in London, the University of London and the University of Groningen.
Teaching
My teaching is currently focused on doctoral studies and supervision.
Research
My first English book, Religious Life and English Culture in the Reformation, was published by Palgrave in 2002. My second English monograph, which was titled Breast Cancer in the Eighteenth Century,was published in 2013 by Pickering and Chatto. Currently, I am working on two very different projects, one on Henrician England and the other on the history of esotericism in fin-de-siècle-Finland.
I have had the great honour of being the principal investigator in two greatly successful finalised research projects funded by the Academy of Finland. Within these projects, I have had the pleasure of supervising bright young scholars with PhDs as well as postdoctoral scholars. The first of these projects was Difference and Corporeality Experiences of Bodily Otherness in Premodern English Culture,which was conducted in 2004–2007. The other was Modus Vivendi. Religious Reform and the Laity in Late Medieval Europe, which was conducted in 2012–2016.
I am currently acting as the principal investigator in the research consortium Profiling Premodern Authors(2016–2019), which is funded by the Academy of Finland. The consortium is formed by two parties: one from the Department of Cultural History and the other from the Department of Future Technologies.
My other current project, The Long Shadows of Hatred(Vihan pitkät jäljet, 2017–2018), is a two-year Argumenta project funded by the Finnish Cultural Foundation. The project is a discussion between scholars and other actors on the historical constructions of hate speech, polemics, and hatred.