Visiting researcher profile: Varpu Alasuutari
Varpu Alasuutari is a researcher from Tampere University visiting the Centre for Gender Research September–November 2022.
What is your research about?
My visit is part of my postdoctoral research on Affective Activism: Sites of Queer and Trans World-Making, a project which is conducted at Tampere University, Finland. Within this project I study the history of Christian queer activism in Finland from the late 1960s to the early 2000s. I am interested in the affective tensions between the Church institution and homosexuality in this era, as well as the feelings and hopes of people involved in this activism.
During my visit to the Centre for Gender Research, I'm exploring the Swedish/Nordic connections of this activism through archival research and work on building networks with queer studies scholars in Sweden.
Keywords: activism, affect theory, queer theory, queer history, queer religion, queer death studies, queer kinship studies.