PhD Mika Hallila is a Senior researcher in Literature at the University of Jyväskylä. He is Associate Professor of Literary Theory at the University of Eastern Finland and holds a habilitation qualification from the University of Warsaw in Poland. During his research career, Hallila has, among other things, been Professor of Literature at the Universities of Eastern Finland, Jyväskylä and Warsaw for several years.
Mika Hallila specializes in the study of contemporary literature, his latest research interest being the global cultural and social change perspective on metamodernism in Finnish culture and literature. He also has expertise in theoretical and literary-historical research on the novel. His main research interests include the relationship between literature, well-being, health, and illness. He is currently conducting a study on suicide representations and their affectivity in Finnish contemporary autofictional literature. Hallila has published an in-depth research monograph on the cultural meanings of smoking in Finnish literature.