
Areas of expertise
Biography
Before beginning my PhD project in Turku, I have graduated from the Documentary Film Practice program at the Brunel University London (UK), with Master of Arts degree in 2010, and from the University of Tampere with Master in Social Sciences from 2005, in International Relations and Journalism. I have also worked as a journalist, copy editor, cinematographer and writing coach.
Teaching
University of Turku:
- lectures on various topics in film studies (2014-)
- course: Poetics and Politics of Contemporary Nordic Documentary, Autumn 2017
- Practice-based workshop on documentary filmmaking, Autumn 2017
- SELMA writing circle: Dimensions of Humanistic Writing, Autumn 2018
- course on film aesthetics: Näkökulmia elokuvan estetiikkaan, Autumn 2019
Turku Arts Academy:
- course on documentary film history, 2012-2013
Research
In my article-based PhD, with the working title Documentary Imagination: Practices of Remembering in the Contemporary Nordic Documentary Film, I explore how films create relationships with the past in the present. As my primary material, I investigate five Nordic documentaries produced in the 2000s where documentary remembering emerges as an evocative and collective process that forms connections between people, places and different temporalities. Remembering in documentary does not form a linear narrative from the past to the present, but in the film world, many temporalities exist simultaneously, interacting each other.
I am particularly interested in the shadows of Nordic societies where the hegemonic national narratives are challenged, in relation to the Second World war, Nordic colonialism and displacement. The transdisciplinary research is situated in the crossroads between documentary film studies, memory studies and postcolonial studies. Documentary film is seen here as a site for encounters, translations and transformations of memory, where aesthetic and ethical potential of the film medium itself can be examined closer.