Mila
Seppälä
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Areas of expertise
Biography
I am a postdoctoral researcher at the John Morton Center for North American Studies at the University of Turku and at the Tampere Peace Research Institute at the University of Tampere. My research focuses on social movements, political imagination, utopias, and communitarian living and care work as reactions to societal crises. I have a Ph.D. in political science with a focus on North American studies. My dissertation focused on youth activism and gun violence prevention in the United States. I spent the academic year 2021-2022 at The University of Texas at Austin as an ASLA-Fulbright Pre-Doctoral Research Fellows grantee.
Teaching
At the JMC, I have taught seminar courses on social Movements and protest in the United States. I have given guest lectures on youth activism, African American Hair and worked as an instructor on the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election course, the 2022 and 2026 Congressional Elections course. I also worked as a TA for Professor Benita Heiskanen on her “Race, Class and Gender” course and for Senior Researcher Lottamari Kähkönen on her “Poor and Working-Class Whites in the U.S” course in the North American Studies minor program. I have completed the Basic of University Pedagogy module.
Research
My current research focuses on modern crises and utopian imaginations and practices in the United States and Finland. As part of the Emil Aaltonen funded “Politics on the Brink of Collapse: Imaginaries of Existential Risk and Societal Exit Movements” (COLLAPSE) project, I examine intentional communities, their visions for the future, and the complex dynamics between the everyday utopian possibilities and the political apathy and isolation that communal living can produce. In the Research Council of Finlanf funded “HomeFront: Feminist analysis of the ‘home’ as a site of militarisation in Finland” project, I study militarisation in Finland with a focus on the gendered dynamics of care and militarism in soldiers’ homes. In HomeFront, I also examine feminist utopias as a driver for demilitarisating the home. My expertise is in fieldwork, and in both projects, I use methods of interviews, participant observation and non-participant observation.