SILK Team

Riikka Taavetti, PhD, with the Title of Docent, University Lecturer in gender studies at the University of Turku, project leader. Taavetti oversees SILK’s execution and mentors the junior researchers. Taavetti has published extensively on queer histories in Finland and Estonia and has expertise in particular on developing queer history methodology. Her research in SILK focuses on the cultural visibility of queer and gender non-conforming women. University of Turku profile page | Personal website

 

Rebeka Põldsam, PhD, is a research fellow in Ethnology at University of Tartu. In 2023, she defended her doctoral dissertation on Estonian queer history. Põldsam has curated art and historical research-based exhibitions (e.g., Kumu Art Museum, Pori Art Museum, MO Museum in Vilnius, Vabamu Museum of Occupations and Freedom in Tallinn), and is a visiting lecturer at Estonian Academy of Arts. She was the co-writer and co-director of a short film on the interwar period queer nightlife in Estonia The Night of Purple Horrors (2024). In SILK, Põldsam studies the so-called gender non-conforming individuals and garçonne representations in interwar Estonian print media and the lives of Estonian queer women based on archival sources. Estonian Research Information System (ETIS) profile page

 

Astrid Joutseno/Swan, PhD, is a researcher in the Finnish Research Council Project “Counter-Narratives of Cancer: Shaping Narrative Agency” (2023–2027), University of Turku. Joutseno/Swan’s postdoctoral research focus is on her original finding, the grief of the dying. Her interest in grief extends to cancer grief, generational and inherited grief and artistic expressions of grief – aspects that she develops further in SILK. Astrid Swan is an award-winning songwriter and performer. In SILK, Joutseno/Swan starts her mid-career research producing both academic and artistic results by working with the archival material of Kerttu Wanne and Astrid Joutseno. In addition, Joutseno/Swan’s compositional work takes the recordings of Wanne and Joutseno as the starting point and will lead to live performance. University of Turku profile page

 

Ave Palm, MA, is a PhD candidate and a junior research fellow in English language and literature at the University of Tartu. Palm is interested in representations of transnational lesbian modernism, which she has been studying in the context of Anglo-American literature for her PhD project. She works with interpretations of non-conforming gender and sexuality in queer novels from the interwar period. This specialisation allows her to contribute to SILK regarding the transnational flows of sexological theories and gender constructs, with particular insight into how the depictions of queer women are connected to the cultural trends and social developments of the time period. After defending her PhD thesis in 2027, Palm joins SILK to investigate cultural representations of queer women in interwar Estonia, focusing on print media, fiction and cinema. Estonian Research Information System (ETIS) profile page

 

Saimi Korhonen, MA, is a junior researcher on the project. In her master’s thesis, Korhonen focused on sexologist Havelock Ellis and his understanding of queer women based on his book Sexual Inversion (1897). She is currently working on her PhD thesis about Ellis’s understanding of gender diversity within the book series Studies in the Psychology of Sex (1897–1928). Her role on SILK is to research the reception of sexological theories, debates and understandings in Finland, and to highlight how Finnish discussions on sexuality and gender contradict or conform to the research done in notable bases of sexological research, such as England.