Satu

Sorvali

I am working as a postdoctoral researcher from August 2026 to July 2028 on a research project funded by the Kone Foundation titled “Am I Allowed to Be Myself?” The Cultural History of Dieting and Body Relations in Modern Finland (LAIHKE). I am researching how fatness has been linked to women’s social class in press discussions from the 1890s to the late 1990s. My source material consists of newspapers and magazines, including both editorial texts and reader letters. I draw on perspectives from gender history and methods of digital historical research to examine extensive data sets and long-term changes.

I studied in my dissertation (2023), which combines the perspectives of the history of emotions and media history, the emotional and discursive culture of the Grand Duchy of Finland in the late 19th century, focusing on anger-like emotions. My main sources were reader letters from the 1890s newspapers.

After defending my doctoral thesis, I have researched topics such as early Finnish female editors and the history of freedom of speech from the perspective of newspaper readers.