JMC Personnel

Benita Heiskanen received her Ph.D. in American Studies from The University of Texas at Austin in 2004, and has since then worked in Ireland, Denmark, and Finland. Before joining the JMC, she was employed as Collegium Researcher at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS). Within the past decade, she has led three major research projects, funded by the Research Council of Finland and the Kone Foundation. She currently directs the project, “Reproduction Wars: Imaginaries and Mobilizations in the U.S.-Mexico Transborder Region” (Research Council of Finland, 2023–2027). Through a mixed methods approach combining archival and online research, team fieldwork, cultural analysis, and a quantitative survey, the project maps the respatialization of women’s bodily rights, contested within the U.S.-Mexico Transborder region. She is a member of the University of Turku Collegiate Council (2022–2025), a past-president of the American Studies Network (2021–2023), and currently serves as member of the Advisory Board of the European Journal of American Studies (2021–2029). She is the codirector, together with the Finnish American Studies Association, of the 28th Biennial Conference of the Nordic Association for American Studies (NAAS), taking place at the University of Turku on June 4–6, 2025.

Prof. Heiskanen’s research and teaching deal with U.S. history, politics, and culture, as well as Transnational American Studies. Based on her recently completed Research Council of Finland project, she coedited (with Albion M. Butters and Pekka M. Kolehmainen) an open access volume, Up in Arms: Gun Imaginaries in Texas (Brill, 2022) and the forum, “Perceiving Security and Insecurity: The Campus Carry Law in Texas,” for the Journal of American Studies. Her open access article, “Un/Seeing Campus Carry: Experiencing Gun Culture in Texas,” was published in the European Journal of American Studies in 2020. Her early-career work dealt with racial/ethnic, class, and gender relations in U.S. history, society, and culture, U.S. Latino/as, the U.S.-Mexico border region, popular culture, and sport. Methodologically, she specializes in transdisciplinary research practices, ethnography, oral history, and visual analysis. Theoretically, she is interested in the politics of visual culture; the geography of the body, space, and place; and race, class, and gender formations. Prof. Heiskanen is a frequent media commentator on U.S. politics, elections, and current events.

Niko Heikkilä works as a project researcher at the JMC in the Academy of Finland-funded “Reproduction Wars: Imaginaries and Mobilizations in the U.S.-Mexico Transborder Region” (REPRO) project. In the project, Heikkilä examines the policing of women’s reproduction in Texas, focusing on how anti-abortion organizations mobilize people to surveil abortion seekers and providers. He is interested in how such groups in Texas responded to the legislative shift both in terms of assisting in and going beyond conventional policing of abortions.

His previous research has focused on the contemporary history of social movements and social conflict in the U.S., as well as issues of social control and repression and the dynamics of social change and reaction. Heikkilä received his Ph.D. in Cultural History from the University of Turku in 2021. His dissertation, “Reactionary and Revolutionary Mobilizations: The Ku Klux Klan, the Black Panther Party, and FBI Counterintelligence, 1964–1971,” examined the meanings of social change, focusing on the contested interplay between the revolutionary Panthers, the reactionary Klan, and the repression of the FBI in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Heikkilä has previously worked as a research assistant at the JMC in the research project “U.S. Election Year 2016” in the spring of 2016. In 2019-2020, he was a Fulbright visiting researcher at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the Department of American Studies. Recently, he was a coeditor of an edited volume on the research methods of cultural history, titled Kulttuurihistorian tutkimus: Lähteistä, menetelmiin ja tulkintaan (2022), and he has published articles in journals such as the European Journal of American Studies and American Studies in Scandinavia.

Pekka M. Kolehmainen is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS) and the John Morton Center for North American Studies. His project, titled "The Conceptual Language of Antifeminism and Reactionary Realignment in the United States", studies antifeminism as a bridge between different reactionary movements in U.S. history. His research focuses on the conceptual dynamics of antifeminism, examining the co-optation and redefinition of concepts in antifeminist ideological language. Kolehmainen’s larger research trajectory centers on explicating the ideological, cultural, and rhetorical dynamics of the Culture Wars in recent U.S. history and the intersections between political ideology and popular culture. He holds a Ph.D. in Cultural History (2022) from the University of Turku, where his dissertation, "Rock, Freedom, and Ideologies of 'Americanness': U.S. Culture War Debates of the Late Twentieth Century", studied the use of rock as an ideological concept in U.S. political print media during the 1980s and 1990s, contextualized in the larger framework of the Culture Wars. Previously at the JMC, Kolehmainen was part of the Academy of Finland-funded Campus Carry project studying U.S. gun culture and its ideological rhetoric. On the subject, he coedited an open-access edited volume with Benita Heiskanen and Albion M. Butters, Up in Arms: Gun Imaginaries in Texas (Brill, 2022), where his research was published as the chapter “The Founding Fathers in the Temporal Imaginaries of Texas Gun Politics.” His teaching at the JMC includes the course, “Culture Wars in the United States,” and he has in the past taught the introductory course to North American Studies and a seminar on the study of popular culture. He also provides media commentary on U.S. politics and culture, with special expertise in conservatism and right-wing movements.  

Oscar Winberg is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS) and the John Morton Center for North American Studies (JMC). His current project “Breaking the News: How Congress Remade Television News” studies congressional pressure of television news in the United States, circa 1968–1974. He received his Ph.D. from the History Department at Åbo Akademi University in Turku, Finland, in 2021. His dissertation, “Archie Bunker for President: Television Entertainment and the Transformation of American Politics in the 1970s,” is a political history of television entertainment and politics. He is the coeditor (with Outi Hakola, Janne Salminen, and Juho Turpeinen) of the edited collection The Culture and Politics of Populist Masculinities (Lexington 2021). His work has also appeared in the European Journal of American Studies, PS: Political Science & Politics, Finsk Tidskrift, and Lähikuva.

Winberg’s research interests include media and politics, political history, television studies, Hollywood in political life, and political journalism. His teaching focuses on modern and contemporary U.S. history, mass media, and political history. In 2018, he was a visiting researcher at the American Political History Institute at Boston University. He has also worked in different research projects at the University of Helsinki, University of Turku, Åbo Akademi University, and University of Eastern Finland. Since 2017, he has served as board member of the New Foreign Policy Society in Finland.

He is a frequent commentator in Finnish and Swedish media on United States politics, history, and culture, including as a columnist for Hufvudstadsbladet 2022-2023. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post. In 2015, he created the podcast Campaign Context, which featured some of the most prominent historians and political scientists in the United States as guests, for the JMC. Together with Anna Bäck of Yle, he created the award-winning radio series Trump och USA – valet 2020 for Yle in 2020.

At the JMC, Jaakko Dickman is part of the CUBAFLUX project, funded by the KONE Foundation. In the project, Dickman works with visual materials collected from fieldwork periods. He has created the project’s website, and curated its visual archive, which will be used in teaching and for the benefit of the broad public and media. In addition, he has written a popular article and participated in conference presentations. At the JMC, he has prepared funding applications as well as participated in various visual design projects promoting the JMC’s scholars’ activities and events. He served as a TA in the “JMCT0006 Introduction to North American Studies” course in fall 2022 and he coordinated courses “Organizing Osmo” and “Film Pass” in spring 2023. He first came to the JMC as an intern in March 2020.

Jaakko specializes in online community and visual culture research. He has a Master of Arts degree from the Department of Media Studies at the University of Turku. His master’s thesis “Breitbart as an Affective Community: The Case of the Capitol Hill Riots,” analyzes the role of emotions in the processes of interpretation and community building in right-wing online news comment sections in the United States. He was accepted to conduct his Ph.D. dissertation at the Doctoral Programme of Social and Behavioural Sciences at the University of Turku in 2023. The dissertation examines visual politics of post-left communities in the context of the United States. In 2024, Dickman received a four-year full-time grant for his research from the Finnish Cultural Foundation. 

Nadia Nava works as a researcher in the CUBAFLUX project, funded by the Kone Foundation. Her research revolves around the effects of Cuba's recent, state-led digital revolution in people's lives, focusing on the transnational public sphere and the emergence of new digital economies. She is particularly interested in 1) urban imaginaries in social media, 2) youth internet cultures and the appearance of Cuban influencers, and 3) digital diaspora experiences. This Fall, she will be the instructor in charge of the Current Issues Seminar "Cuba-U.S. Relations in Flux."

Nava holds a master's degree in History of the Americas from Universidad Michoacana (Mexico). She is currently completing a doctoral degree in political history at the University of Helsinki. Her work has been guided by a broad interest in Interamerican relations and Mexico's historical ties with Europe. In her doctoral dissertation on Mexican-Finnish relations during the 20th Century, she explores the construction of mutual imaginaries with an emphasis on printed culture. She has taught Mexican history at the undergraduate level, including a course at the University of Helsinki, and commented on current Mexican and Cuban issues in the media.  

Mila Seppälä is working on her Ph.D. dissertation at the John Morton Center for North American Studies as a doctoral researcher fully funded by the Doctoral Program of Social and Behavioural Sciences Her research focuses on youth activism and the development of political imagination in the gun violence prevention movement in the United States. She has worked on multiple publications together with the Campus Carry project including the co-written essay on student testimonials on Campus Carry in the Journal of American Studies (2021) and a book chapter in the open access volume Up in Arms: Gun Imaginaries in Texas (Brill, 2022). She has previously taught a seminar course on social movements in the United States in the North American Studies (NAMS) program as well given guest lectures on U.S. elections, youth political participation and African American hair. She also worked as a TA for Professor Benita Heiskanen on her “Race, Class, and Gender in U.S. History and Culture” course.

Seppälä spent the academic year 2021–2022 at The University of Texas at Austin as a Fulbright grantee conducting fieldwork for her dissertation and studying in the American Studies program. Previously at the JMC, she worked as project researcher for the “Tragediauutisoinnin haasteet – median mahdollisuudet käsitellä kouluampumisia” project, which focused on the challenges media faced while reporting on the Parkland, Florida school shooting in 2018. She finished her master’s degree in 2018 in the Department of English at the University of Turku, specializing in discourse studies and legal language. She has written about topics such as gun politics, youth activism, TikTok and the 2020 presidential elections for Turun Sanomat and the SAM Magazine.

Julia Niinistö is Contemporary History major at the University of Turku currently working on her master’s degree. The topics present in her thesis work are political memes and how politicians are portrayed in them. In 2023, Niinistö graduated with a Bachelor of Social Sciences, with the thesis titled "Poliittisissa meemeissä esitetyt johtajuuskuvat Yhdysvaltain presidentinvaaleissa 2016" [Portrayals of Leadership in Political Memes during the 2016 US Presidential Election]. Through her research, she is looking to discover how memes can facilitate political participation and how political spaces URL are affecting political climate and discussions IRL.

Niinistö is especially interested in discovering the potential variables which can affect the portrayal of politicians in memes: be it gender, socio-economic background, race etc. The intersections of what kind of attributes are highlighted in the memes are of interest, since this can broaden our understanding of how politicians are viewed in online political spaces. Continuing to develop her research skills, Niinistö is looking to bring her expertise and enthusiasm on online political spaces and visual forms of online political communication to the JMC.

Dr. Sinikka Grant is a Visiting Scholar working on her sabbatical project, which examines the nexus of increasing multiculturality and the rise of nativism/nationalism in the USA and the Nordic countries, and how contemporary literature in these countries grapples with these two divergent cultural and political trends.

Dr. Grant received her Ph.D. from University at Buffalo in 2006. Her dissertation, Haunted Heritage: History, Memory, and Violence in the Drama of August Wilson and Suzan-Lori Parks (2006), examines the manifestation of trans-generational trauma in African American drama, and more specifically in the works of the two Pulitzer-prize-winning African American playwrights, August Wilson and Suzan-Lori Parks. Dr. Grant has taught in several colleges and universities in the USA; she is currently Professor of English at State University of New York (SUNY) College at Cobleskill. Dr. Grant’s areas of specialization are African American Literature, American Literature, American Drama, Multicultural Literature, and American Studies. In recent years her research as well as teaching interests have become increasingly interdisciplinary, with a focus on multiculturality.

Dr. Grant is a strong advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). She is particularly proud of her work as the chair of the SUNY Faculty Senate’s Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity Committee, which has allowed her to work towards more equitable teaching and learning environments and increased inclusion of DEI content across the disciplines throughout the SUNY system. In Fall 2023, she co-chaired the first SUNY Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Social Justice in the Curriculum Conference at University at Albany.

Dr. Tuula Kolehmainen won the 2023 Rob Kroes award for her Ph.D. dissertation, “Like Men They Stood”: Black Male Vulnerability as Resistance to Stereotypes in Fiction Written by African American Women (2022). Her dissertation, which is to be published via Brill, focuses on fiction written by African American female authors from the late 1960s to the late 1990s. In addition, she has published an essay on Jhumpa Lahiri’s short fiction in the Keltaiset esseet collection (2016), an article on Toni Morrison’s Tar Baby in the journal American Studies in Scandinavia (2018), and her chapter on Toni Cade Bambara’s short fiction was published in the anthology Mediating Vulnerability: Comparative Approaches and Questions of Genre (2021) by UCL Press.

At the JMC, Kolehmainen develops her postdoctoral project, “Playing with Power and Vulnerability in African American Stand-up,” thus turning her focus on self-representation of Black male vulnerability. While her Ph.D. project largely rests on Black feminist and intersectional theories (in addition to Black male studies and literary studies), her current research incorporates Black male studies and humor studies to produce new knowledge of Black male vulnerability and its connection to humor. Kolehmainen is experienced in stand-up comedy herself, with over 400 performances including the Finnish Channel 4 show Nelosen Stand up!

Currently working as a University Instructor of English at Tampere University, Kolehmainen has previously taught the courses “Short Fiction by African American Women in Context” and “African American Cultural Expression” for the North American Studies program at the JMC. Kolehmainen is also a member of board and communications officer of The Finnish American Studies Association (FASA).

To be confirmed

Chair		Vice Chair
	Ambassador of Finland Mikko Hautala  Embassy of Finland, Washington D.C.		CEO Alexandra Pasternak-Jackson Amcham
Members
	Executive Vice President, Corporate Affairs and Brand Minna Aila Konecranes		Manager of International Affairs Mika Akkanen City of Turku
	Director General Elina Anttila National Museum of Finland		Licensed psychologist, occupational health psychologist, sports psychologist, psychotherapist trainee Tuomas Grönman Psychology Expert Consulting Firm, Tuomas Grönman Ltd.
	Ministerial Adviser Eero Hokkanen Ministry of Transport and Communications		Strategic Content Coordination Specialist Taina Iduozee Public Diplomacy Section, U.S. Embassy, Finland
	Director Johanna Ikävalko Arctic Centre, University of Lapland		SVP, R&D Pasi Järvenpää Teleste
	Member of Parliament Jani Kokko Social Democratic Parliamentary Group		Director Hanna-Leena Korteniemi Unit for North America, Ministry for Foreign Affairs
	Vice Rector, Professor Teemu Leinonen University of the Arts Helsinki & Aalto University Photo: Aalto University/Veera Konsti		Chief Executive Officer Terhi Mölsä Fulbright Finland Foundation
	Senior Editorial Writer Jussi Niemeläinen Helsingin Sanomat		Legal Advisor Raija-Leena Ojanen WWF
	Product Director, Engagement & Trust Luis Orozco Schibsted Finland		Secretary General Hanna-Mari Peltomäki Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation Photo: Mikko Mäntyniemi
	Director, International Affairs & Trade, Finland Chamber of Commerce Päivi Pohjanheimo Secretary General, ICC Finland		McDonnell Douglas Professor of American Studies Mikko Saikku University of Helsinki Photo: Veikko Somerpuro
	Senior Research Fellow, LL.D. Ville Sinkkonen Center on US Politics and Power (CUSPP) at The Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)		Foreign News Correspondent, Two-time US Correspondent, Producer Paula Vilén The Finnish Broadcasting Company, YLE Photo: Yle

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Benita Heiskanen, Professor of North American Studies, University of Turku

Nina Tynkkynen, Professor, Political Science Unit, Åbo Akademi University

Hannu Salmi, Professor, Cultural History, University of Turku

Henri Vogt, Professor of Political Science, University of Turku

Chair		Vice Chair
	Senior Specialist Eero Hokkanen Ministry of Transport and Communications		Associate Professor Minna Ruckenstein Center for Consumer Society Research, University of Helsinki Helsinki Center for Digital Humanities
Members
	SVP, Sustainability and Corporate Affairs Minna Aila Neste		Manager of International Affairs Mika Akkanen City of Turku
	Director Ulla Bergström Stoa Cultural Centre		Creative Director and Head of Scripted Seija-Liisa Eskola Warner Bros. Finland
	Executive Director Lena Grenat SAM		Professor Emeritus Markku Henriksson University of Helsinki
	Strategic Content Coordination Specialist Taina Iduozee Embassy of the United States		Author Juha Itkonen
	Director, Unit for North America Soili Kangaskorpi Ministry for Foreign Affairs		President Ulla Koski Helsingin Sanomat Foundation
	Associate Professor of New Media Design and Learning Teemu Leinonen Aalto University		Juan Carlos Moya Business Investment Solutions JCM Consulting
	Researcher, Writer, Lecturer Mary McDonald-Rissanen		Chief Executive Officer Terhi Mölsä Fulbright Finland Foundation
	Journalist Mette Nordström YLE		Chief Executive Officer Alexandra Pasternak-Jackson Amcham Finland
	Chief Financial Officer Jussi Ropo Barona		Research Director Sampo Ruoppila University of Turku
	Managing Editor Laura Saarikoski Helsingin Sanomat		Educational Curator, Board Member Leena Svinhufvud Design Museum, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation
	Executive Director, Fundraising Elina Talonen-Lintunen Youth for Understanding Finland		Professor Juha Vuori Tampere University
	Senior Lecturer David Yoken Turku University of Applied Sciences

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Chair		Vice Chair
	Professor Juha Vuori University of Tampere		Research Director Sampo Ruoppila University of Turku
Members
	ARC Director Taina Iduozee Embassy of the United States		Professor Elina Mainela-Arnold University of Turku
	Chief Executive Officer Terhi Mölsä Fulbright Finland Foundation sr		Director of Research Lauri Rapeli Åbo Akademi University
	Senior Researcher Minna Ruckenstein Consumer Society Research Centre, University of Helsinki		Professor Hannu Salmi University of Turku

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Chair		Vice Chair
	SVP, Communications and CR Arja Suominen Finnair		Professor Emerita Marjatta Hietala University of Tampere
Members
	EVP, Marketing and Corporate Affairs Minna Aila Konecranes		Founder Jari Ala-Ruona Aion Sigma
	Head of Productions and Scripted Seija-Liisa Eskola Warner Bros. Finland		CEO Kjell Forsén Vaisala
	Executive Director Lena (Hartikainen) Grenat SAM		Director, Communications and Public Affairs Veera Heinonen Sitra
	Professor Emeritus Markku Henriksson University of Helsinki		Communications Manager Eero Hokkanen Arctia
	Journalist Kari Huhta Helsingin Sanomat		Director, Membership Services Jenni Isola Amcham Finland
	Counsellor of Education Kristina Kaihari Finnish National Agency for Education		Under-Secretary of State Elina Kalkku Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Finland
	CEO and Co-Founder Saara Kankaanrinta Soilfood		President Ulla Koski Helsingin Sanomat Foundation
	Director of Strategy Tanja Kotro Viima Solutions		Professor Jarno Limnéll Aalto University
	Chairman, Board of Directors Tuomo Lähdesmäki Turku University Foundation		Journalist Mette Nordström YLE
	Board Member Minna Nurminen Kone Foundation		Educational Curator, Board Member Leena Svinhufvud Design Museum, Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation
	Executive Director, Fundraising Elina Talonen-Lintunen Youth for Understanding Finland		Author Jussi Valtonen
	Professor Emeritus Keijo Virtanen University of Turku

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