[For inquiries please contact the coordinators of the group.]

Elo, Kimmo, D.Soc.Sc, Adjunct professor, is a senior researcher in the Center for Parliamentary Studies at the University of Turku. He has a long track record in interdisciplinary digital studies both in teaching and research. His digital research activities focus on network analysis, text and data mining, knowledge visualisation, programming (esp. Python, scripting languages) and graph databases (Neo4j). His empirical research applying digital methods focuses on German and European history and politics since the end of WW2.

Ginter, Filip, PhD, Assistant Professor of Language Technology: “I am a researcher at the Department of Future Technologies, University of Turku. My research is in the area of natural language processing. See turkunlp.github.io. I am also a part-time AI Scientist with Silo.ai.”

Hakkarainen, Heidi, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher in the project Viral Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe at the University of Turku. In 2019 she will work as a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.

Ijäs, Ulla, PhD, University Teacher (fixed term), Finnish History, School of History, Culture and Arts Studies: “Recently I have researched migration, merchant communities and urban material culture in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century northern Baltic.”

Kannisto, Maiju, doctoral candidate, Cultural History, University of Turku: “I am finalizing my thesis on the change in the production culture of commercial television in Finland. My research interests and publications focus on Finnish media history, media industries and exploring the digital methods.”

Kurvinen, Heidi, PhD, works as a postdoctoral scholar at the Turku Institute for Advanced Studies/Cultural History. She is a beginner in digital humanities but is looking for ways to combine close and distant reading of media texts in her study on feminism in the Finnish mainstream media from the 1960s to 2007.

Laakkonen, Simo, Senior Lecturer of Landscape Studies, University of Turku. His main research theme is history of environmental reporting in the Baltic Sea Region and environmental history of computer games.

Latva, Otto, doctoral candidate, University of Turku, Department of Cultural History.  Latva works currently in Oceanic Exchanges project. His research interests include human-animal studies, human-ocean relationship, history of science and environmental history in early modern as well as modern period. Latva is finalizing his PhD thesis, studying how the late nineteenth-century understanding of the giant deep-sea cephalopod, the giant squid, formulated in a transatlantic culture. In his dissertation, Latva uses big data methodologies to investigate the transatlantic circulation of knowledge and the formulation of concepts related to the giant squid.

Launis, Kati, PhD, University Researcher (University of Eastern Finland) and Adjunct Professor of Finnish Literature at the University of Turku: “I’m focusing on the reception of Russian literature in Finland during the early years of Finnish literary institution (1840–80). The research is part of the project Texts on the Move (Emil Aaltonen Foundation), connected to digital research methods and virtual research tools such as NEWW and ParRus.”

Mähkä, Rami, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at Cultural History, University of Turku. His main fields of research are popular / media culture and history culture. His current research focuses on branding, productization and marketing of popular culture.

Nivala, Asko, PhD, Adjunct Professor is a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with Turku Institute for Advanced Studies and Cultural History, University of Turku. His research project Romantic Cartographies: Lived and Imagined Space in English and German Romantic Texts, 1790–1840 applies geoparsing and other text mining methods to study spatiality in English and German Romanticism. Nivala has also contributed to Computational History and the Transformation of Public Discourse in Finland, 1640–1910 and Oceanic Exchanges projects.

Oiva, Mila, postdoctoral researcher, Oceanic Exchanges project, cultural history, University of Turku: “In my current position I study spreading of news globally in the 19th century newspapers with the help of digital research methods and computer assisted text reuse identification. Previously I worked at the “Roadshow” project at the History of Innovations and Industrialization (HIIVA) group at the Aalto University. In the project we facilitated digital history research in Finland. I teach and use in my research digital text analysis and digital map visualizations.”

Paju, Petri, PhD, is a researcher at Aalto University and at the University of Turku, and has written broadly on history of technology in Finland and on computing history in the Nordic countries: “I’ve been involved in several projects on digital history, including Computational History and the Transformation of Public Discourse in Finland, 1640–1910 (2016–2019), and two Kone Foundation funded projects since 2016: Towards a Roadmap for Digital History in Finland and its continuation From Roadmap to Roadshow: A collective demonstration & information project to strengthen Finnish digital history. I’m mostly interested in the historical development of the digital history approaches, and in applying computational methods to answer various relevant historical research questions.”

Paloposki, Outi, Professor, Department of English, University of Turku, School of Languages and Translation Studies: “My area of expertise is history of translations in Finland: translation and language policies and cultural history of translations. The newspaper and journal archives in the digital collections of the National Library of Finland are an important source of data for newspaper discourse and reviews; Institute for the Languages for Finland collects full-text materials from the 19th century; and for literature, I have been using archives such as Gutenberg.org, runeberg.org etc.”

Parente-Čapková, Viola, PhD., Adjunct Professor at the University of Turku and at Charles University, Prague. She works as a researcher at the University of Turku and is a member of the Board of the DARIAH-EU Working Group Women Writers in History. Currently, she works on her project Women’s Centres and Peripheries (funded by Georg and Ella Ehrnrooth Foundation) and is the Leader of the University of Turku and University of Tampere Joint Research Project Texts on the Move: Reception of Women’s Writing in Finland and in Russia 1840-2020, aiming at creating new ways of collaboration between transnational research in literature and cultural history, traditional and digital humanities.

Penttinen, Saara, doctoral candidate, University of Turku. Research field: Virtual travel by 17th Century English and Scottish Cabinets of Curiosity.

Rantala, Heli, PhD, is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Cultural History, University of Turku. She has been working in the project Computational History and the Transformation of Public Discourse in Finland, 1640-1910 concentrating on text reuse in the Finnish press.

Salmi, Hannu, PhD, Academy Professor and Professor of Cultural History, University of Turku: “My research interests focus on, for example, digital history, the history of audiovisual culture, and the cultural history of the nineteenth century. I’ve been involved in several projects on digital history, including Computational History and the Transformation of Public Discourse in Finland, 1640–1910 (2016–2019) and Oceanic Exchanges: Tracing Global Information Networks In Historical Newspaper Repositories, 1840–1914 (2017–2019). My current project is Viral Culture in Early Nineteenth-Century Europe (2017–2021).”

Seppänen, Liisa, PhD, Docent, University of Turku & University of Helsinki: “In my research, I have focused on urban archaeology and digitalization of archaeological material and data.”

Suominen, Jaakko, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Professor of Digital Culture at the University of Turku. With a focus on the cultural history of media and information technologies, Suominen has studied computers and popular media, internet, social media, digital games and the theoretical and methodological aspects of the study digital culture. He has lead several multidisciplinary research projects, funded by the Academy of Finland (e.g. the Digital Humanities programme, team leader in CoE in Game Culture Studies etc.), Tekes, companies and municipal bodies and has over 100 scholarly publications (e.g. Media History, Technology&Culture, New Media & Society, Routledge, Gaudeamus, Vastapaino).

Vesanto, Aleksi, Research Assistant, University of Turku, Department of Future Technologies: “My research focuses on natural language processing as well as developing tools to further analyze historical data.”

Välimäki, Reima, Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Turku, Department of Cultural History: “My research interests are heresy, inquisition and polemical literature in medieval Western Europe. I approach these themes with a range of methods from manuscript studies to computational history. My current research concentrates on questions of authorship attribution in the project PROPREAU. In 2020, I will start a new project about computational analysis of medieval Latin polemics in Turku Institute for Advanced Studies. “