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A Lost Mitten and Other Stories

The project, Lost Mitten and Other Stories, examines a new sense of neighbour relations that transpires as a result of growing mobility. The project focuses on the ways in which these new neighbour relations or a sense of neighbourliness emerge from stories related to personal items of significance, and the way in which these stories are perceived. Lost Mitten and Other Stories is an interdisciplinary project that seeks collaboration between art and science. The project is carried out in eastern Finland.

The main concern of the project is to find out how the items of personal significance and the stories related to them help establish dialogue and, consequently, new kinds of mobile and cross-border neighbour relations and a sense of neighbourliness. Furthermore, the purpose is to explore how dialogic interaction helps promote, for example, the construction of cultural citizenship and create new, migrating, deterritorial cultural heritages. The items of personal significance as well as the stories relating to them are examined through a materialistic, cultural, linguistic, and narrative point of view and are, additionally, exhibited through artistic, interactive displays. The items of personal significance are understood as a poetic and political medium of various dialogues between past and present, between immigrants and natives, between different generations, between mobile and sedentary people.

The approach and the subject matter of the project are topical: immigration, different mobilities, the encounter of languages and cultures, and thereby, emerging new neighbour relations and a sense of neighbourliness. The multidisciplinary approach, combining different methods of science and art, enables new ways of examining the issue of neighbour relations and a sense of neighbourliness.

The project combines science and art innovatively and, therefore, generates new methods to investigate the current issues of different mobilities, language and cultural encounters, and challenges arising from new neighbour relations.

The project is funded by the Kone Foundation.

Ágnes Németh ([email protected])

Currently, she is managing two European projects: “CASPER: Citizen Activation in Shrinking rural areas for Place-based policies to Enhance Resilience” (Interreg Europe, 2023-2027) and “SERIGO: Social Economy for Resilience, Inclusion and Good Life in Rural areas” (Horizon Europe, 2024-2027).

She is involved in the research project “ESSPIN: Economic, Social and SPatial INequalities in Europe in the Era of Global Mega-trends” (Horizon Europe, 2022-2025).

Her doctoral thesis dealt with issues of regional policy, relational-governance and mega-events planning. She has been involved in European research projects (European Science Foundation, FP7) in border studies focusing on cross-border cooperation processes and the social (de)construction of borders. In her post-doctoral research, she studies foreigners’ socio-economic engagement in different Finnish urban environments with the aim of producing knowledge on the local particularities and challenges of integration processes. She was managing the international project “ECoC-SME: Actions for inducing SME growth and innovation via the ECoC event and legacy” (Interreg Europe, 2019-2021).

 

Aija Lulle ([email protected])

I am social and cultural geographer. I lead the project Menopausing: exploring awareness, diversity and activism, funded by the Research Council of Finland (2024-2028). I am also a team leader in the UEF, INTERREG Baltic Sea Region project Enhancing Capacities in Disaster Risk Reduction by Facilitating Public-Civil cooperation (CREWS) (2025-2028).

I welcome PhD inquiries related to gender and feminist geographies, health, wellbeing, lifecourse, novel and creative approaches to border studies. security and feminist geopolitics.

 

Alina Kuusisto ([email protected])

I work as a project researcher at the Karelian Institute, University of Eastern Finland. In gained my PhD in 2017 in Finnish history. I have studied higher education policy, history of education and agriculture, Finnish and European cross-border cooperation, as well as the local and regional history of North Karelia and Eastern Finland in 1800s and 1900s .

Aytac Yurukcu ([email protected])

Doctoral Researcher, working on recent research project:

“Imperial War, Collective Memories and National Identities in the Borderlands of Europe: Identity Formation among Peripheral Minorities during and after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78”.

KM-19-11076 Finnish Government Scholarship Pool, EDUFI, “First Encounter of Two Nations in Balkans in the History of Relations between Finland and Turkey; Finnish Soldiers and War Reports During the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-78”.

TM-21-11709 / Finnish Government Scholarship Pool, EDUFI, “War Propaganda and the Role of Media in Comparative Perspective: Analysing the Media Sources of the Russo-Turkish War 1877-78”.

My research interests include journalism, media, press, war correspondence, diaries and reminiscences late 19th and early 20th centuries in the Balkans and Eastern Europe. Also my research area specialises in identity and nationalism, historical image studies, intellectual history, cultural history, mapping and cartography. Currently, I am a reviewer for International Journal of Cartography ICACI/IJC and I am in the Editorial Board of The World History Bulletin (2020/2022), an official publication of the World History Association.

 

I wish to thank the following teachers and professors, who often went against the grain and got into trouble for that and dedicated a lot of their time to my learning and academic development, far beyond what their formal duties required. In order of their appearance in my life: Mustafa Gezer (Secondary School “Aliço School Koyunyeri”, Edirne), Docent Bülent Atalay (Trakya University, Department of History, Edirne), Prof. Hüseyin Mevsim (Ankara University, Faculty of Language, History and Georgraphy, Ankara), Prof. Jeremy Smith (University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu), Docent Teuvo Laitila (University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu).