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Areas of expertise
Biography
I am an Academy of Finland Research Fellow. I am currently on part-time parental leave until autumn 2024.
I completed my Ph.D. in History at Durham University in the UK in 2016, funded by the Osk. Huttunen Foundation and the Finnish Cultural Foundation. I joined the University of Turku in 2017 as an Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Researcher, and worked as a University Lecturer in North American Studies and University Teacher in history. Before coming to Turku, I taught history courses in the UK at Durham University and the University of Newcastle. In 2017, I was Northumbria University’s Early Career Visiting Fellow in American Studies and a Visiting Research Fellow at the British Library’s Eccles Centre for North American Studies. In 2018 I spent time as a Visiting Research Fellow in Canada, at the University of Saskatchewan and at the University of Ottawa.
My article in Cold War History (2020) received an honorary mention by Historians of the Twentieth Century United States and my article in the Western Historical Quarterly (Winter 2017) was awarded the Bert M. Fireman and Janet Fireman Award by the Western History Association. I have also been published in the Canadian Historical Review, British Journal of Canadian Studies, Comparative American Studies and the Journal of American Studies.
Teaching
As University teacher of history from 2022-2023, I taught the following courses:
The Modern Age
Proseminar and Bachelor's Thesis
Perspectives on Researching Colonialism
Digital History Workshop
Searching for and Evaluating Historical Information
As University Lecturer on the North American Studies minor program from 2021-2022, I taught courses including:
Indigenous Identities in North America
Tracing U.S. Histories
Theoretical and Methodological Approaches
Research Seminar
Osmo Film Club
Research
As Academy Research Fellow, I lead the project 'White Solidarity and Native North American Rights in the United States, Canada, and Western Europe, 1960s-1990s.' This research looks back to the work of white activists for Native North American rights in the US, Canada, and Western Europe from the 1960s to the 1990s, to question how effective solidarity can be built. Using archival research, literary writings, and oral history interviews of members of past white-led rights organizations, this research will uncover how solidarity is shaped by enduring societal structures. It aims to advance the scientific understanding of the structures of whiteness and settler colonialism and their intersections.
In addition, I am PI on the project 'Fake, Steal, Borrow: The Appropriation of Indigenous Cultures in Finland throughout the 1900s', funded by the Kone Foundation. This project examines the phenomenon of cultural appropriation through the study of how the cultures (including, for instance, practices, symbols, and material items) of Sámi and North American Indigenous cultures have been appropriated in Finland throughout the twentieth century. It investigates why Finns have been fascinated by Indigenous cultures from both within and beyond the borders of the nation, and in what ways and for what purposes they borrow from these cultures.
I am also interested in contemporary activist movements, U.S. and Canadian domestic policy, oral history, and popular representations of race.