I am a literary and cultural scholar specializing in cultural mental health research. I work as a postdoctoral researcher.
I received my PhD in October 2025 with a dissertation on the cultural significance of psychiatric diagnoses in contemporary Finnish culture.
Alongside my academic work, I have worked as a freelance journalist for the Finnish Broadcasting Company (Yle). I have produced, among other projects, the podcast series Diagnoses Among Us (Diagnoosit keskuudessamme), which popularizes my research, and From Village Fools to Stoic Heroes (Seinähulluista sisupusseihin), a series exploring village fools and other forms of madness in Finnish literature.
I also serve in several positions of trust within the media sector, including Chair of the Radio and Television Journalists' Union and Board Member of the Union of Journalists in Finland. Previously, I served as a member of the Council for Mass Media in Finland.
Psychological suffering and life difficulties are increasingly explained in contemporary culture through models that emphasize the brain and neurochemistry. At the same time, neuroscientific knowledge, psychiatric and neuropsychiatric diagnoses, and the interpretive frameworks associated with them have gained a more visible role in culture, media, and people's ways of understanding themselves and others. These developments have been discussed in research through concepts such as neuroculture and the diagnostication of culture.
In my ongoing research and science communication projects, I examine manifestations of neuroculture in Finnish literature, media, and contemporary culture. I am particularly interested in the cultural meanings of psychiatric and neuropsychiatric diagnoses and their connections to identities, conceptions of personhood, and cultural understandings of normality and difference.
My work operates at the intersection of literary and cultural studies, cultural mental health research, Medical Humanities, and interdisciplinary research on health and well-being. In 2026, my research is funded by the Uuden Suomettaren Foundation, Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse, and the Ella and Georg Ehrnrooth Foundation.
