I am specialist in 20th Century Eastern European, particularly Soviet cultural history, cultural diplomacy of the Cold War era, and memory studies. I have published extensively on cultural, international and transnational East-West connections, particularly from the Soviet perspective, including edited volumes Beyond the Curtain: Entangled Histories of the Cold War-Era Europe (Berghahn 2015), Music, Art, and Diplomacy: East-West Cultural Interactions and the Cold War (Routledge 2016), as well as Entangled East and West. Cultural Diplomacy and Artistic Interaction during the Cold War (Degruyter 2019). I have also authored a multi-author monograph Networking the Russian Diaspora: Russian Musicians and Musical Activities in Interwar Shanghai (Hawaii UP 2019). My current research involves cultural resistance against the Soviet central authorities especially in the Baltic republics during the late Soviet period.
More information and e.g. full publication list can be found from: Simo Mikkonen
I obtained my PhD in Medicinal Chemistry from the Institute for Physiologically Active Compounds of the Russian Academy of Science in 2019. The PhD studies were carried out with Professor Mikhali Krasavin at Saint Petersburg State University. My research is focused on the design, synthesis and biological profiling of Carbonic anhydrase inhibitors. I am currently involved in a project related to the design of melanin-binding antiglaucoma drugs at the University of Eastern Finland.
Teemu Oivo is a postdoctoral researcher at the Karelian Institute studying digital borders. Additionally, Oivo is part of the Academy of Finland-funded project “Transnational Death: Practices of death and remembrance in the transnational everyday on the Finnish-Russian border” and the Kone Foundation funded-project “Flowision”. In Fall 2023, Oivo is doing a research exchange at the Université Grenoble Alpes as part of the “Transnational Death” -project.
Oivo is specialized in critical discourse analysis and media research, using varieties of platforms, most notably in-depth analysis of online group communications. Oivo’s doctoral dissertation examines how “Russianness” was produced in Finnish-Russian transnational media space in the 2010s. Oivo’s recent research project affiliations include “Strategies of Persuasion: Russian Propaganda in the Algorithmic Age”, and “The Ancient Finnish Kings: a computational study of pseudohistory, medievalism and history politics in contemporary Finland and Russia”.
I work as a Professor in cultural studies (specialising in research on cultural change) at the School of Humanities, University of Eastern Finland. My recent research has focused on borders and borderlands from the point of view of culture, literature, and material artefacts, and my latest monograph addresses Finnish language literature in Russian Karelia, ”Rajan kirjailijat: Venäjän Karjalan suomenkieliset kirjailijat tilan ja identiteetin kirjoittajina” (Trans. Writers of the Border: Finnish Speaking Writers of Space and Identity in Russian Karelia, SKS, 2018). My recent research projects include “Traumatized Borders: Reviving Subversive Narratives of B/Order, and Other” (Academy of Finland, 2016-20), and “A Lost Mitten and Other Stories: Experiences of Borders, Mobilities, and New Neighbor Relations” (Kone Foundation, 2018-2022). Visit the virtual exhibition of the project “A Lost Mitten and Other Stories” here: https://www.360panorama.fi/360KadonnutKinnas/.
Orcid: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0100-5394
I am a Professor in Social and Public Policy at the Department of Social Sciences. I am also the deputy director of the UEF’s Borders, Mobilities and Cultural Encounters (BOMOCULT) Research Community.
My research is oriented towards international migration, ethnic relations, bordering processes, diversity, embodiment, as well as participatory and creative methods. Over the years, I have studied topics, such as integration, racism and anti-racism, media use, everyday security, Russian nationality politics and international migration into rural areas.
The central theme of my research is the politicisation of migration issues and understanding how societal changes impact people’s everyday lives. Most recently, I have shifted my research focus towards the issues of security and conflicts. My teaching mainly relates to the above-mentioned themes. I supervise PhD researchers and MA thesis.
I am a qualified body-oriented work supervisor (työnohjaaja STOry), and I gladly support colleagues and students with issues related to well-being at work.
For those interested in doctoral studies under my supervision: If you are interested in applying for a doctoral researcher position in Social and Public Policy at UEF and would like me to supervise your work, please first familiarise yourself with the application guidelines for the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies Doctoral Programme, available on the UEF website. I receive dozens of enquiries of this kind every week and am only able to respond to a limited number of them. If you are seriously considering applying under my supervision, please send me a research proposal prepared in accordance with the application guidelines and without the use of artificial intelligence. I want to learn about you, your research idea and abilities as a researcher, not read generic texts produced by AI. Please also read carefully the section on funding for doctoral studies. It explains that the right to pursue doctoral studies does not include funding, and that funding must be sought separately.
“Traumatized Borders: Reviving Subversive Narratives of B/Order, and Other” (TB) is a multidisciplinary research project which investigates oral and written trauma narratives related to various topographic and symbolic borders in Russian, Finnish, Estonian, Ukrainian, and North-American contexts. In the project, traumas are understood as universal, but yet culturally bound narratives and linguistic constructions. Borders, on the other hand, are understood as political and cultural constructions that create traumas and determines the meaning and significance of border related trauma narratives. Geopolitically, TB focuses on the contemporary EU-Russian border, former Soviet internal borders, and the historical Soviet Union border with the West, whose influence reaches even the North-American context. The study covers time period between the 1920s to the present day including some of the most significant historical events that have defined Russia’s and its neighbors’ topographic and symbolic borders.
In the project, methods provided by cultural studies, folklore research, cultural anthropology, literature research and linguistics are applied.
The project is funded by the Academy of Finland.
I hold a Doctorate in Social Sciences (DSocSci), Human Geography. My doctoral study explored the Finnish-Russian borderland as a lived space during the period from 2013 to 2018. The research examined how residents on both sides of the border imagined and used their local environment in a period of relatively free cross-border mobility. My previous studies have also focused on the everyday life of people living in the Finnish-Russian borderland and on territorial development in border areas.
My last research project was CHANEBO (Challenges at EU’s North-East External Borders). It analysed the impacts of Russia’s war in Ukraine war and the suspension of the CBC ENI programs on the north-eastern external border regions of the EU. It developed policy recommendations on how EU cohesion policy can better support the resilience and sustainable development of its external border regions in the face of future crises.
