I am a historian interested in childhood and adolescence, upbringing and education, emotions and experiences. My research interests combine a strong interpretative and methodological approach to the oral history. The most fascinating aspect of oral history, combining both memory materials and other contemporary sources, is the new way of perceiving and understanding the lived, remembered and narrated experiences of people from the past.
In 2020, I defended my doctoral dissertation at the University of Oulu on the (oral) history of school student associations and school student activism in the 1950s and 1970s. My dissertation was one of the first in the field of history where memory sources and their analytical interpretation played a central role. At the same time, my work opened up a new perspective on the activities and history of the Suomen Teiniliitto, the most important youth organisation in our recent history.
In my postdoctoral research, I continued to work on the history of youth activism. I was involved in a research project (2020-2023) funded by the Kone Foundation, Teiniliitto, vimma ja rakkaus (Teen League, Frenzy and Love, 2020-2023), where we wrote a more multivoiced overall history of the school organisation. In my personal postdoc project, I continued to explore deeper into the history of childhood, researching the history of Finnish playgrounds and children’s play cultures. I am particularly interested in how playgrounds have contributed to the social sustainability and well-being of children and families. For example, I consider how and how childhood play environments are remembered and what meanings are given to them today.
I am particularly fascinated by the methodological development of childhood memories as part of the process of perceiving the past. Childhood memories told in the present day are in many ways challenging research material, but they are often the only possible way of accessing the experiences and daily lives of children of the past. They are also a rich and interesting source of material that opens up new perspectives on the worlds of childhood.
I work as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of History and Ethnology at the University of Jyväskylä. I am also affiliated with the multidisciplinary Children, Families and Social Sustainability (SOSUS) profiling area at the same university.
Twitter: @essijouh
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5243-8552
Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Ah65sP4AAAAJ&hl=fi