Laura Stark, Ph.D., Professor of Ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä, Department of History and Ethnology. Her research interests include anthropological studies of gender, traditional Finnish magic practices and supernatural beliefs, modernization and the rise of the modern self in Finland, and 19th-century Karelian folk religion. In the present project, she is studying Finnish rural women’s power networks operating ‘behind the scenes’ and how these networks became the topic of intense public discussion regarding gender equality in the last half of the 1800s.
E-mail address: firstname.lastname@campus.jyu.fi
Click here for further information.
Marja Kokko, Ph.D., Docent, Researcher at University of Jyväskylä at Department of History and Ethnology. She has analysed several kinds of Finnish communities mainly in 20th century. In this project Kokko is dealing with Finnish co-operative organization and paradoxal women’s question in it.
E-mail address: firstname.lastname@campus.jyu.fi
Click here for further information.
Saara Tuomaala, Ph.D. at the University of Helsinki, Department of History will start in the project in 2010. In her research "Women and Agency 1890-1917: Citizenship as Gendering Process in Modern Politics", she studies women’s agency and political participation in the end of 19th century and the beginning of 20th century. Tuomaala is interested in representations of gender, power and political agency in various political texts produced by women themselves. The source material consists of interviews, women’s political texts in newspapers and pamphlets and texts produced by political organizations.
E-mail address: firstname.lastname@helsinki.fi
Click here for further information.
Eerika Koskinen, M.A., doctoral student, Jyväskylä University, Department of History and Ethnology. In her doctoral thesis “Intersections of Gender, Class and Work – Strategies of a Female Worker in 20th Century Finland”, Koskinen studies oral life story of a female worker born in 1927. Koskinen seeks to elucidate the relationship between an individual and the society and the possibilities to individual agency. The key question of the study is: How does the individual represents herself and her subjectivity in relation to the changing social spheres of gender, class and work? The study also brings about methodological discussion. Koskinen considers the potential of reflexive positioning as a research strategy when studying a relative, in this case, a grandmother. The research material consists of thirteen repeated interviews.
E-mail address: firstname.lastname@campus.jyu.fi
Click here for further information.
Heli Niskanen, Lic.Phil, doctoral student in ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä, Department of History and Ethnology. Niskanen currently works on her doctoral thesis in which she studies how women experience their attempts to conceive and what different ways to act and negotiate about their possibilities in order to get pregnant they have found? The study discusses also the role of the technology and especially assisted reproduction techniques – do they promote agency of women or hinder it? As a source material Niskanen uses online diaries written in the early 21st century.
E-mail address: firstname.lastname@campus.jyu.fi
Click here for further information.
Pasi Saarimäki, Lic.Phil, doctoral student in history at the University of Jyväskylä, Department of History and Ethnology. Saarimäki is studying in his doctoral dissertation how allowed and forbidden sexuality were constructed in the rural Central Finland in the late 19th-century. Saarimäki is interested in how the legislation, the local court, the church and the community tried to define allowed sexual behavior of unmarried and married people in district court of Keuruu. On the other hand it is important to study how men and women act and spoke towards those norms.
E-mail address: firstname.lastname@campus.jyu.fi
Click here for further information.
Arja Turunen, M.A., doctoral student in history at the University of Jyväskylä, Department of History and Ethnology. Arja Turunen’s research addresses how women’s wearing of trousers became common and accepted in Finland. She views the change in dress in the context of the formulation the modern concept of the body. The new bodily ideal meant changes in the bodily practices, e.g. in dress. She studies how women’s wearing of trousers was used to negotiate the ideals of womanhood and women’s body as well as the boundaries of female agency.
E-mail address: firstname.lastname@campus.jyu.fi
Click here for further information.
Members from left to right: Saara Tuomaala, Eerika Koskinen, Arja Turunen, Pasi Saarimäki, Laura Stark, Heli Niskanen ja Marja Kokko.
