Bio:

Ulla Savolainen is an Academy of Finland post-doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki. She holds a PhD in Folklore Studies (University of Helsinki, 2015). Her research interests include oral history and memory studies; folklore; narrative theory; vernacular literature; relationship of memory and narrative with space, place, matter and body; and experiences of migration, diaspora and transnationality. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the life writings of former Karelian child evacuees in Finland and the poetics of life writings and reminiscing as a genre of vernacular expression. She has also researched oral histories of internments of German and Hungarian citizens in Finland in 1944–1946. Her ongoing research project entitled ”Memory Unchained” (2017–2020) focuses on autobiographical literature of Ingrians (a historical ethnic minority of Russia) from the viewpoints of creativity and cultural memory. Savolainen is a secretary and a board member of Finnish Oral History Network FOHN.

Project description:

Ulla Savolainen’s current ongoing research entitled “Memory Unchained: Mapping Individual Creativity and Transnational Cultural Memory in Autobiographical Writings of Ingrians” investigates the role of creative individuals in the processes of cultural memory. It examines a corpus of published and unpublished life writings, memoirs, and autobiographical fiction written by persons with Ingrian background. These writings address the turbulent history of Ingrians (or Ingrian Finns), a Finnish-/Finnic-speaking historical ethnic minority of Russia. Not only does the corpus reflect the major twentieth-century turmoil in Europe such as the World Wars and genocides, it also addresses the diverse mobilities and migrant identities, trends and twists of international politics and ideologies. These works represent diverse genres and are treated as differentiated mediators and reconfigurations of transnational cultural memory. The research articulates the interplay of the cultural and the individual, the collective and the personal, the conventional and the creative. Further still, by engaging not only with the travelling of people, but with the travelling of cultural knowledge and expressive forms across times and places through thepractices of creative agents, the research provides a novel outlook on mobility and transnationality.

Savolainen’s previous research project focused on oral history research on the internment, and its aftermath, of German and Hungarian citizens during 1944–1946 in Finland after the war with the Soviet Union. The research focused on memories and narratives of individuals (usually children of German fathers and Finnish mothers) who were minors during the internment. The study explored the issues related to silence, agency and nationality on personal and societal level. The research materials of this study included oral history interviews conducted by Savolainen. In addition, the role of visual materials and objects as well as the relationship between public memory and personal/private memory were explored. The study also analyzed the reception of the law of compensation (in Finland 2014). The research was a part of the multidisciplinary and international research project entitled Livingmemories: Living together with difficult memories and diverse identities (1 Oct 2015 – 30 Sept 2017, PI: Kirsti Salmi-Niklander). Funded by ‘ERA.NET Plus with Russia’, the multidisciplinary project of Livingmemories focused on different memories and diverse identities related to conflicts in Russia, Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Germany, and Turkey. It addressed the questions: How can people live together after violent conflicts and with traumatic memories? How is it possible to allow difficult memories instead of silencing them? The project was coordinated by the University of Helsinki.