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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.

Alexandra Simon (alexandra.simon-lopez@uef.fi)

My primary fields of research are transculturality, imagology, German writers abroad, German film and television, the European Avant-Garde, and the Apocalypse in cultural productions. I teach all areas of German language and culture courses, including text workshops, oral communication, literature and culture courses, media and business German courses.

I am Docent in Multicultural Literature and Media Studies (University of Turku), and I hold a PhD in Comparative Literature (University of Eastern Finland). My professional career and multilingual and intercultural research projects are grounded in my enthusiasm and personal life, as I have lived and worked in several European countries over the past 20 years. I studied in Germany (Düsseldorf), Spain (Salamanca) and France (Nice), worked as a lecturer in France (Nantes) and the United Kingdom (Cambridge).

Anssi Voitila (anssi.voitila@uef.fi)

Doctor of Theology (University of Helsinki) 2001; Adjunct Professor (Dozent) (University of Joensuu, later University of Eastern Finland) 2007.

Working career: University of Helsinki, Department of Biblical Studies: University Lecturer of Exegetics, Researcher, Assistant, Translator of the Old Testament Apocrypha 1990-2003; University of Eastern Finland (formerly University of Joensuu) University Lecturer of Biblical Languages and Studies 2003 (2021 – Senior University Lecturer). I have been a member in the following academic research projects:  The Research Unit for the Formation of Early Jewish and Christian Ideology (Center of Excellence in Research, Academy of Finland) 2000-2005; Birth and Transmission of a Holy Tradition (EURYI) 2007-2012; Project participant: Changes in Sacred Texts and Traditions (CSTT) (Center of Excellence in Research, Academy of Finland) 2014-2019.
My research interests span the language of the Septuagint (Greek), its translation technique, Classical Hebrew language, semantic change and the book of Ben Sira.

I am particularly interested in Septuagint syntax as a part of the broader Post-Classical, Hellenistic, or koine Greek syntax of the last three centuries BCE. Because the Septuagint is a translation, the most powerful method for examining this language is translation technic study. I have also done some research concerning the theology of the translation: Ideologically motivated transformations in the Greek version of the Book of Ben Sira and written a paper on Moses in the Greek Pentateuch. My latest interests include the polysemy and semantic change as evidenced in the Classical and Hellenistic Greek corpus of which the Septuagint forms an important part: I have written about the auxialiary verb construction μέλλω + INF., on ἁπλοῦς “simple” and its derivates and at the moment I am working on the verb ἐκβάλλω.

I have recently widened my research interest to the Greek middle voice (medium) in the Septuagint, e.g. why the translators occasionally use middle voice although the Hebrew source text has an active verb form, as well as to the translation of the Hebrew verbless clauses, my question is how and why do the translators resort to verbal clauses, rendering the verbless clause in the Septuagint. My publications include Présent et imparfait de l’indicatif dans le Pentateuque grec: une étude sur la syntaxe de traduction (Helsinki-Göttingen 2001).

Applied statistics and statistical machine learning

In applied statistics, our focus is in forest biometrics and in analysis of grouped, spatially and temporally dependent data. In forest biometrics, we work on applications of spatial point process theory and stochastic geometry in forest inventories. In analysis of dependent data, one major application is the modeling of greenhouse gas fluxes on peatlands based on chamber measurements. In machine learning, our focus is in statistical modeling from massive datasets, where typical data set size is 0.5TB. General goal is to estimate a generalizable model with which recognition can be performed on the previously unseen dataset. Previously, the group focused on recognition tasks from the speech signal, such as automatic speaker and language recognition. Recently, we have used image, video, text and molecule biological datasets, in addition to speech data.

Damaskinos Olkinuora (damaskinos.olkinuora@uef.fi)

During my academic career, I have studied music, Classics and theology. Accordingly, my research concentrates mainly on Middle Byzantine patristic material, especially liturgical texts (sermons and hymnography) and the context of their performance in worship. I am also interested in the theology of friendship and in the use of new research methodologies, such as performance theory, in patristic studies. I also produce translations of source texts, primarily from Greek to Finnish.

– Matrication Examination, 2004 (Ressu Upper Secondary School, Helsinki)
– Diploma of Byzantine Music, Central Conservatory of Thessaloniki (Greece), 2008
– Master of Theology, University of Joensuu (Finland), 2009 (major: Orthodox Church Music)
– Master of Music, Sibelius Academy (Helsinki, Finland), 2012 (major: Music Education)
– Bachelor of Arts, Metropolia University of Applied Science (Helsinki, Finland), 2013 (major: Early Music)
– Doctor of Theology, University of Eastern Finland (Joensuu, Finland), 2015 (major: Systematic Theology and Patristics)
– Master of Arts, University of Helsinki (Finland), 2017 (major: Greek language and literature)

Dawid Bunikowski (dawid.bunikowski@uef.fi)

I am a legal philosopher of Polish descent, residing in Eastern Finland (North Karelia, Joensuu). I did my PhD in Poland in 2009 (on law and morality: abortion, euthanasia, human fertilisation, cloning, pornography, prostitution, same-sex couples, etc.). I did different postgraduate studies in: 1) human resources management, 2) economics, 3) MBA-sustainable and inclusive leadership, 4) Jews in Poland. I carried out my postdoctoral research at the University of Eastern Finland (UEF, School of Law), in 2013-2015 (on the recent global financial crisis as an axiological crisis: the crisis of law and the crisis of morality; business ethics/corporate governance). My Docent title was granted by the University of Lapland in 2022 (in the field of philosophy of law in the Arctic).

I have been a Visiting Researcher at the UEF School of Theology since 2020. Additionally, I am a University Professor at the State University of Applied Sciences in Wloclawek (Department of Administration) in Poland. I am a Lecturer at the University of Guyana (Department of Law) in Guyana. I am a former Visiting Professor at Carleton University (Department of Law and Legal Studies) in Ottawa, Canada.

I am a law and religion scholar. I work on state church relations, religious freedom, Catholicism and Judaism, but also on relations between law, morality and religion. My main research interests concern as well: law and morality, law and politics, law and society, law and anthropology, law and language, etc. Much of my research has covered indigenous cultures in the Arctic like customary laws, recognition of indigenous rights or protection of sacred sites. I am also to ethical foundations of economy.

Moreover, I do “all things Polish”.

While in the School, I teach:

I also taught here (2022/2023):

  • “Jews and Judaism in Poland, Russia, the Baltic countries and East Central Europe”,
  • “Ukrainian-Polish relations: history, politics, culture, law, religion”.

Moreover, while in social sciences (2023/2024), I am the coordinator of the YUFE course “Global Migration and European Identity” and have taught “Populism in East Central Europe”.

Elina Heimala (elina.heimala@uef.fi)

Finnish as a second language (courses 1A – 2B, work life Finnish, staff courses). I work in Kuopio campus.

I also make doctoral research about second language acquisition.

Elina Siltanen (elina.siltanen@uef.fi)

I work as University Lecturer of English Language and Culture from August 1, 2023.

Previously I have worked at UEF in 2020-2021.

My research focuses on contemporary American experimental poetry. I am currently doing research under the title Affective Border-Crossings: Reading for Human-Nature-Culture Connections in Anglophone Literatures. My previous project Difficult Relations: Reading for Emotion in Recent American Experimental Poetry was  funded by the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation, the Kone Foundation and the Emil Aaltonen Foundation. I worked on this project at the Department of English, University of Turku. In the project, I wrote several articles. My monograph, Experimentalism as Reciprocal Communication in Contemporary American Experimental Poetry: John Ashbery, Lyn Hejinian, Ron Silliman, was published by John Benjamins in 2016.

Previously, I have worked in substitute teaching positions at the Department of English, University of Turku, Lund University, and at Luleå University of Technology. I have a double doctoral degree/PhD from the University of Turku and Luleå University of Technology (2014).

More information and my complete list of publications on my website http://www.elinasilta.com.