Researchers

Markku Lehtimäki is Professor of Comparative Literature at the University of Turku, Finland, and PI of the research project The Novel’s Knowledge. His fields of expertise are narrative theory, visual culture, ecocriticism, and the rhetorical conception of authorship. His earlier research projects include the consortium The Changing Environment of the North: Cultural Representations and Uses of Water (2017–2021), funded by the Academy of Finland. markku.lehtimaki@utu.fi

Elina Arminen is a university lecturer of literature (University of Eastern Finland), and holds the title of docent of Finnish Literature (University of Turku). Her areas of expertise include sociology of literature, authorship, Finnish modern and contemporary literature, and fictional and visual representations of the northern nature. She led the project Depicted Karelia (2019–2022, Karjalaisen Kulttuurin Edistämissäätiö), and worked on The Changing Environment of the North project (2017–2021). elina.arminen@uef.fi

Ralf Kauranen is a sociologist and comics scholar. He has studied and written broadly on Finnish comics culture and its transnational connections, among other things on comics and migration, comics in cultural policy, and multilingualism in comics. In the last few years, Kauranen has lead the project Comics and Migration: Belonging, Narration, Activism (2018–2021) and worked as a researcher in the project Tove Jansson’s Productions 2018–2021), both financed by the Kone Foundation. ralf.kauranen@utu.fi

Lotta Luhtala (MA) works on her Ph.D. at the University of Turku. Her research interests are the interconnected relations of veganism, non-human animals, gender and the environment in Finnish and international narrative fiction. Her fields of expertise are vegan studies, critical animal studies, narrative theory and ecofeminism. Luhtala has worked in The Changing Environment of the North project (2017–2021), and received personal grants from the Finnish Cultural Foundation’s Central Fund and North Karelia Regional Fund. lotta.h.luhtala@utu.fi

Hanna-Leena Määttä (nee Nissilä) is a literary researcher interested in transnational and cross-border literature, and the questions of belonging and otherness in literature and literary field. Her dissertation focused on literature by writers with an immigrant background, as well as on transnationalization of literary life in Finland in the 2000s. Määttä has studied the cosmopolitan worldview in Tove Jansson’s late production and the memory of experiences of war and forced migration in evacuation literature. hanna-leena.hl.maatta@jyu.fi

Laura Piippo (Ph.D., Title of Docent in Literature) has a background in literary studies. Her fields of expertise are Finnish contemporary experimental fiction and literature in digital environments. She works as a postdoctoral researcher at Narrare at The Tampere University. Her current research project focuses on the places, forms, and value of a book (codex) in digital environments. The topic of her Ph.D. thesis (2020) was the experimental poetics of the Finnish novel Neuromaani by Jaakko Yli-Juonikas. laura.piippo@tuni.fi

Group photo by Ella Pitkänen.
Artwork used on the website: Elizabeth San Miguel.