Brexit provides an excellent opportunity to examine how the formal (state) and informal (social) processes of border-making relate to each other and play out in the everyday life of those impacted by this historic change. As the transitionary period after UK’s exit from the EU ends in December 2020, it is important to discuss the impact of the Brexit process from a migrant perspective. The prolonged uncertainty has already had an impact on the lives of intra-European migrants at multiple levels: for their legal status and rights as residents, for their work opportunities and career prospects and for identity and the sense of belonging and feeling of social inclusion to their host societies – be they the UK for the Nordic migrants or any of the other EU countries for the Brits.
UEF is host to several research projects that focus on the impact of Brexit on intra-European migrants. Dr. Tiina Sotkasiira has interviewed Finns living in Scotland and England as a part of her research on Brexit and Finns in Britain and Dr. Saara Koikkalainen has collected data among Nordic nationals in London . Together with two colleagues, researcher Peter Holley and Dr. Nicol Savinetti, Dr. Koikkalainen has also conducted a survey among Brits living in Europe (n=752).
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.
Having defended my Russian “candidate of science” dissertation in 2007, I am currently writing my “European” PhD thesis, which was devoted to cross-border governance on the EU-Russian border, participatory arrangements in cross-border programmes and the role of non-state actors in inter-regional cooperation. However, after Russian invasion of Ukraine there is no more “cross-border cooperation” and “cross-border governance” on the EU-Russian border. So my current research is being revisited towards exploring the “subaltern geopolitics” of the Finnish-Russian border, i.e. the geopolitical imagination of subaltern groups having direct or indirect relations to this border. Also, as a research hobby and a natural scope of interest, I study academic freedoms in Russia (and Russian academia as subaltern).
As a freetime hobby, for many years now, I do journalism. Previously, I reported on sensitive issues of Russian political and social life, such as human rights violations by the state, by the Russian Orthodox Church, by security agencies and courts. Currently, I cover different issues of the Finnish-Russian relations for Russian readers.
Currently research on the Mesoamerican Maya Forest 2019-2024, funded by the Mexican CONACYT (2019-2020) and the Finnish Kone Foundation (2020-2024).
Previous research: Conservation Politics in the Transboundary Usumacinta River Basin (2017-2019), Mexican and Latin American Midwiferies (2014-2016), Mexican Southern Borderlands (2012-2014), Decolonization and the Zapatista Movement (2006-2011).
Member of the Mexican National System of Researchers, level 1 (CONACYT-SNI 2019-2021).
Previous affiliations: El Colegio de la Frontera Sur (ECOSUR, Mexico), Centro del Cambio Global y la Sustentabilidad (CCGS, Mexico) and Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS, Mexico).
In her research, Jaana Vuori is currently focusing on migrant integration work and public service interpreting. She is also interested in the research topics parenting, family and gender. Vuori is working as the professor in gender studies in Cultural Studies BA and MA programs. Methodologically Vuori is specialized in qualitative research methods, especially discourse analysis and ethnography. Vuori is part of the research community https://www.uef.fi/en/research-community/borders-mobilities-and-cultural-encounters-bomocult.
In my doctoral dissertation, I study the institutionalisation of the Russo-Swedish border(land) in the 18th century. The interests of the physical, institutional and mental border formation reflected in the local community.
In the project Grand Duchy of Finland as Political Space, I study the meanings of ‘grand duchy’ in the 18th century.
I am a member of a research network Pax Nordica: Experiences and lessons of the Nordic Peace, ca 1721–1830.
Teaching
Paleography (3 cp), Intermediate studies in history
I carry out research on the recent and contemporary history on the countries of the Former Soviet Union. At present, there is an especial emphasis on the five countries of Central Asia. My research interests range from very specific, localized events and their impacts, to broad understandings of the interactions of time and space and the legacies of empires and long-distance trade routes on peripheral landscapes. My current projects involve work on post-Soviet borders, the role concern for ethnic Russians in neighbouring countries plays in Russian policy making, and constitutional arrangements and understandings of national minority rights in new post-Imperial countries.
Joni Virkkunen (PhD, title of docent) works as a Research Manager at the Karelian Institute. He is also the Director of the VERA Centre for Russian and Border Studies, a member of the executive board of the UEF’s top-level research area Borders, Mobilities and Cultural Encounters (BOMOCULT) and of the cross-faculty Doctoral Programme in Social and Cultural Encounters. His research relates to borders, border governance, cross-border cooperation, EU-Russian relations, regional and cross-border cooperation and transnational migration in Russian and post-Soviet contexts. He has been recently studying, for example, the Northern Dimension policy and the regional impacts of EU-Russia relations, local meanings of the border and cross-border cooperation, the 2015-2016 Arctic migration route through/from Russia to Finland and, recently, temporary protection holders from Ukraine. The latter he has been studying through Finnish and Russian migration and border policies, publicity and public debates, migrants’ everyday insecurities, and informal practices.
