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). She recently completed a four-year Academy of Finland-funded project that studied gun politics and culture in Texas. Based on that research, she coedited (with Albion M. Butters and Pekka M. Kolehmainen) an open access volume, Up in Arms: Gun Imaginaries in Texas (Brill, 2022), including the chapter “Triggered: The Imaginary Realities of Campus Carry in Texas.” In 2021, she edited the forum, “Perceiving Security and Insecurity: The Campus Carry Law in Texas,” for the Journal of American Studies, including the essay “Not in My Office: Rights in an Armed Campus Space.” Her open access article, “Un/Seeing Campus Carry: Experiencing Gun Culture in Texas,” was published in the European Journal of American Studies in 2020. She is a member of the University of Turku Collegiate Council (2022-2025) and serves as President of the American Studies Network (2020-2023) and member of the Advisory Board of the European Journal of American Studies (2021-2029).

Heiskanen’s current research interests include Transnational American Studies, USA-Cuba relations, U.S. gun culture & politics, visual culture, and space and place. Her prior work has 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 methods, ethnography, oral history, and visual analysis. Theoretically, she is interested in the politics of visual culture and the ethics of looking; the geography of the body, space, and place; and race, class, and gender formations. She currently directs a project on urban transformation in Havana, which is funded by the KONE Foundation. Her prior research includes the TIAS project that studied experiences and representations of violence on the El Paso, Texas-Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua border between the United States and Mexico. She is a frequent commentator in Finnish media about U.S. history, society, and culture and served as columnist for Suomen Kuvalehti from January 2019 to June 2021.​

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.  

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 the Faculty of Social 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 worked as a TA for Professor Benita Heiskanen on her “Race, Class, and Gender in U.S. History and Culture” course and as a guest lecturer in the North American Studies (NAMS) program.

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 project “Tragediauutisoinnin haasteet – median mahdollisuudet käsitellä kouluampumisia,” 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, and the 2020 presidential elections for Turun Sanomat and the SAM Magazine.

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.  

Tuula Kolehmainen defended her Ph.D. dissertation, “‘Like Men They Stood’: Black Male Vulnerability as Resistance to Stereotypes in Fiction Written by African American Women,” in the field of English in June 2022 (University of Helsinki). Her dissertation 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.

Kolehmainen is currently in the process of developing her postdoctoral project, “‘You’re Just Gonna Have to Take My Word for It’: Vulnerability in the Autobiographies of Bill Cosby and Richard Pryor,” 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, trauma studies, and humor studies, and focuses on Black male stand-up comedians in order 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!

In Fall 2022, Kolehmainen teaches the course “Short Fiction by African American Women in Context” for the North American studies program at the JMC. Her aim is to teach students to understand and analyze the literary contributions of the selected 20th century authors in different historical and sociopolitical contexts, considering the authors’ roles as both artists and as social agents. Kolehmainen is also a member of board and treasurer of The Finnish American Studies Association (FASA).

Oscar Winberg is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the JMC. His current project “Breaking the News: How Congress Remade Television News” studies congressional pressure of television news in the Nixon era, 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. Since 2017, he has served as board member of the New Foreign Policy Society in Finland.

Winberg’s research interests include media and politics, political history, television studies, Hollywood in political life, and political journalism. His teaching focuses on modern 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. 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.  He is a frequent commentator in Finnish and Swedish media on United States politics, history, and culture. His work has also appeared in the Washington Post. Together with Anna Bäck of Yle, he created the award-winning radio series Trump och USA – valet 2020 for Yle in 2020. He has been a columnist for Hufvudstadsbladet since February 2022.

At the JMC, Jaakko Dickman is part of the CUBAFLUX project, funded by the KONE Foundation. In the project, Jaakko 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. At the JMC, he has also participated in various visual design projects promoting the JMC’s scholars’ activities and events. He first came to the JMC as an intern in March 2020. In the fall semester 2022, he serves as a TA in the “JMCT0006 Introduction to North American Studies” course.

Jaakko specializes in online community and online 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 US. He is currently in the process of developing a research proposal for his Ph.D. application.

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
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	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
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	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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