Links
Areas of expertise
Biography
My work history includes positions in three different Finnish universities. I worked as a University Assistant and Senior University Assistant of Comparative Literature at the University of Tampere between 2002 and 2012, and after that as a Senior University Lecturer of Literature at the University of Eastern Finland from 2012 onwards. I also served as an Acting Professor of Literature at the University of Eastern Finland for the academic year 2016–2017. I held the position of Acting Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Turku for the academic year 2018–2019. Beginning from May 2020, I have been Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Turku. I completed my PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Tampere in 2005 and was granted the title of Docent (Adjunct Professor) of Comparative Literature at the University of Tampere in 2008. During my postdoctoral research period, I served as a visiting scholar under the auspices of Project Narrative at Ohio State University in the US in 2011.
Teaching
My teaching responsibilities include advanced theoretical studies, the Master’s thesis seminar, and the supervision of MA theses and doctoral dissertations. I also teach special courses based on my ongoing research, such as environmental literary studies and the rhetorical theory of narrative. The texts discussed in these courses consist mainly of Anglo-American literature and literary theory.
Research
The topic of my doctoral dissertation was the poetics and rhetoric of American nonfictional narrative. In addition to American literature, my research interests have since focused on narratology and the rhetorical theory of narrative, ecocriticism or environmental literary studies, visual culture and film, and the contemporary Anglophone and Finnish novel.
My research projects include “Natural Narratology, Cognitive Poetics, and Ecocriticism” (funded by the Academy of Finland, 2009–2011), “The Changing Environment of the North: Cultural Representations and Uses of Water” (funded by the Academy of Finland, 2017–2021), "The Novel's Knowledge: The Changing Roles of Author and Book in Society" (funded by the Kone Foundation, 2022–2024), and "Authors of the Story Economy: Narrative and Digital Capital in the 21st Century Literary Field" (2024–2028).
Websites of the research projects:
https://sites.utu.fi/aqua-cen/en/
https://sites.utu.fi/romaanintieto/
I'm the author of three monographs – The Poetics of Norman Mailer's Nonfiction: Self-Reflexivity, Literary Form, and the Rhetoric of Narrative (Tampere University Press, 2005), Sofi Oksasen romaanitaide: Kertomus, etiikka, retoriikka ("The Art of Sofi Oksanen's Novels: Narrative, Ethics, Rhetoric," Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura 2022), and Nature and Narrative: Rhetoric and Design in Contemporary Fiction (Routledge, forthcoming in 2025) – and co-editor of several anthologies, including Narrative, Interrupted: The Plotless, the Disturbing, and the Trivial in Literature (De Gruyter 2012), Visual Representations of the Arctic: Imagining Shimmering Worlds in Culture, Literature, and Politics (Routledge 2021), and Cold Waters: Tangible and Symbolic Seascapes of the North (Springer 2022).