Areas of expertise
Biography
My work history includes positions in three different Finnish universities. I worked as a University Assistant and Senior University Assistant of Comparative Literature at the University of Tampere between 2002 and 2012, and after that as a Senior University Lecturer of Literature at the University of Eastern Finland from 2012 onwards. I also served as an Acting Professor of Literature at the University of Eastern Finland for the academic year 2016–2017. I held the position of Acting Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Turku for the academic year 2018–2019. Beginning from May 2020, I have been Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Turku. I completed my PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Tampere in 2005 and was granted the title of Docent (Adjunct Professor) of Comparative Literature at the University of Tampere in 2008. During my postdoctoral research period, I served as a visiting scholar under the auspices of Project Narrative at Ohio State University in the US in 2011.
Teaching
My teaching responsibilities include advanced theoretical studies, the Master’s thesis seminar, and the supervision of MA theses and doctoral dissertations. I also teach special courses based on my ongoing research, such as environmental literary studies and the rhetorical theory of narrative. The texts discussed in these courses consist mainly of Anglo-American literature and literary theory.
Research
The topic of my doctoral dissertation was the poetics and rhetoric of American nonfictional narrative. In addition to American literature, my research interests have since focused on narratology and the rhetorical theory of narrative, ecocriticism or environmental literary studies, visual culture and film, and partly on the contemporary Finnish novel. My research projects include “Natural Narratology, Cognitive Poetics, and Ecocriticism” (2009–2011), a postdoctoral research project funded by the Academy of Finland, and “The Changing Environment of the North: Cultural Representations and Uses of Water” (2017–2021), a consortium funded by the Academy of Finland, in which I serve as Principal Investigator.
https://sites.utu.fi/aqua-cen/en/
My works-in-progress and forthcoming publications focus on the visual representations of the North and the Arctic in literature and other forms of art, the methodological cross-pollination of narratology and ecocriticism, and the rhetoric of narrative in the contemporary novel.