Anu Koivunen

Professor of Cinema Studies, Department of Media Studies, Stockholm University 2012–; Associate professor, Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University, Sweden, 2008–2012; Acting Professor of Media Culture. Department of Literature and the Arts (Taideaineiden laitos), University of Tampere 2006-2007; Assistant professor, Department of Cinema Studies, Stockholm University 2005–2007; Adjunct Professor (Docent) in the fields of Cinema and TV Studies and Women’s Studies Faculty of Humanities, University of Helsinki (2004); Adjunct Professor (Docent) in the field of Media Culture Faculty of Humanities, University of Tampere (2004)

My research centres on Finnish cinema and television history as well as the construction of gender, nation and sexuality in audiovisual culture. For a decade, the main focus of my research has been the cultural construction of emotions and affects in the public sphere, and the metatheoretical question of ‘an affective turn’ not only in media studies but also in gender and cultural studies more widely. In my recent works and on-going projects, I have moved to study affectivity as a mode of cultural memory and historiography, and as a key issue of mediated politics in contemporary public sphere.

I am currently on leave from my post as Professor of Cinema Studies at Stockholm University for a Senior Research Fellowship at University of Helsinki for the prestigious interdisciplinary research programme Driving Forces of Democracy: Patterns of Democratization in Finland and Sweden, 1890–2020 (2015–2017), led by Professor Henrik Meinander and funded by Jane and Aatos Erkkos Foundation (Finland) and Östersjöstiftelsen (Sweden). Working with ten historians at Universities of Helsinki and Jyväskylä and Södertörn högskola in Sweden, I investigate the role of broadcasting in forming and reproducing the national public sphere in Finland and Sweden (1950s–1980s) and today.

Another on-going research project focuses on Vulnerability: Rethinking Representation, Politics and Materialism (Swedish Research Council 2012–2017). Within this project, currently in its final stretch, I have investigated the affective logic of pride and shame informing 21st century public narratives about Sweden Finns: films, novels and TV programmes in which the children and grandchildren of the 1960s–1970s mass migration investigate their complex national legacies and the social stigmas of Finnish immigration to Sweden.