Displaced Families, Dispersed Memories

Johanna Leinonen is a research specialist at the Novia University for Applied Sciences, Finland. She completed her PhD in history in 2011 at the University of Minnesota, United States. She holds the title of associate professor (docent) in research on multiculturalism from the University of Turku (2016). Her research interests include migration history, forced migration and family separation, family and marriage migration, and gender and migration. She is the lead editor of Forced Migrants in Nordic Histories (Helsinki University Press, 2025), which won the Nordic History Book Award in 2025.

Seija Jalagin is a senior lecturer of history at the University of Oulu, Finland, and she holds the title of associate professor (docent) in the history of cultural interaction at the University of Turku. In addition to cultural encounters, she specializes in gender history, migration, and integration. Recently her research has focused on refugee policies and practices in 20th-century Finland, as well as familial memories of forced migration. She is one of the editors of Forced Migrants in Nordic Histories (Helsinki University Press, 2025), which won the Nordic History Book Award in 2025.

Outi Kähäri is a postdoctoral researcher in the research unit for history, culture and communication studies at the University of Oulu. She holds a doctoral degree in sociology (University of Turku, 2017) and the title of associate professor (docent) in minority history at the University of Oulu (2025). Her recent studies have concentrated on intergenerational relationships and (post)memories in transnational Ingrian families. Her field of expertise includes qualitative methods, research on institutional and social trust, interaction, sociological memory studies, and minority history.

Ilmari Leppihalme is a university teacher in gender studies at the University of Oulu and a postdoctoral researcher in the project Margins of Memory: The Legacies of the Lapland War and Reconstruction. His doctoral dissertation, completed in 2019, focuses on the works of Anu Kaipainen, a Finnish author of Karelian descent. His current research interests concern literary representations of forced displacement during World War II in Finnish literature—so-called “evacuee literature”—as well as the broader affective legacies of war.

Hanna-Leena Määttä holds the title of associate professor (docent) in literary and cultural studies and works as a researcher and senior lecturer at the University of Oulu, Finland. Her research focuses on literature in relation to displacement, transnational phenomena, and cultural memory. She explores how literature reflects and shapes experiences and memories of war, migration, diaspora, belonging, otherness, and racism in contemporary Finnish literary culture.

Elina Turjanmaa is a university lecturer in social psychology at the University of Eastern Finland. Her research themes relate to migration, family relationships, and mental health. Lately, she has worked with the topics of family disclosure, both verbal and nonverbal, ethnic identity, and intergenerational transmission of historical trauma.