Contact Us

If you have any questions about the project, please contact the Project Director:

Anu Korhonen
anu.korhonen(at)helsinki.fi.
tel. +358 2941 23294

Area and Cultural Studies
Department of World Cultures
P. O. Box 59
00014 University of Helsinki
Unioninkatu 38 A

Research team

Docent, Dr. Anu Korhonen
Principal Investigator
University lecturer in European Area and Cultural Studies at the Department of World Cultures, University of Helsinki.
Research topic: Colour-Coding the Comic: Racist Humour in Contemporary History and Culture
E-mail: anu.korhonen(at)helsinki.fi

Anu Korhonen is a cultural historian and an expert on the history and theory of humour and laughter. She has discussed issues related to the project’s theme in her PhD on the history of fools and jesters (1999), in a recent monograph on humour and gender in early modern Europe (2013), and in several articles. Her subproject within the Dark Side of Humour deals with racist and gendered humour in contemporary Finland and Britain. As head of the European study line within Area and Cultural Studies, she teaches courses related to the theme of the project and supervises theses related to it, allowing us access to a widening body of future research and expertise.

Docent, Dr. Giacomo Bottà
Project researcher
Docent in Urban Studies (University of Helsinki) and in Music Research (University of Tampere)
Research topic: Humour, Spatiality and the City: Practices of Exclusion in Urban Culture

Giacomo’s research has dealt with urban cultural studies on a comparative European level to determine how art and cultural expressions can be used to better understand space and spatialities on one hand, and communities and societies on the other. He has recently published the edited volume ‘Invisible Landscapes: Popular Music and Spatiality’. He is currently teaching at the University of Helsinki and at the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences. In this project, he is analysing the role that humour place as instrument both of urban displacement and segregation on one hand and as an active weapon of resistance on the other.

Docent, Dr. Outi Hakola
Project researcher
University lecturer in North American Studies at the Department of World Cultures, University of Helsinki.
Research topic: Mimicking Dying: Aging and Death in Sketch Comedy
E-mai: outi.j.hakola(at)helsinki.fi

Outi Hakola’s background is in media studies. She is interested in the role of emotions in media and public discussion. Her previous research concentrates on popular culture and questions of death, dying and mourning in fictive films and television drama (her blog in Finnish). She has published a book “Rhetoric of Modern Death in American Living Dead Films” (2015). Her teaching in North American Studies has dealt with issues related to popular culture, and also on questions of humour as political and social participation.

Docent, Dr. Leena-Maija Rossi
Project researcher
Docent in Art History and Gender Studies (University of Helsinki) and in Visual Culture (University of Turku)
Research topic: Intersectionality of Humorous Legitimization of Violence in Contemporary Comedy

Leena-Maija Rossi is a researcher of gender and visual culture. She has published and taught extensively on queer studies, contemporary art and media culture. Her publications include such books as Heterotehdas (Hetero Factory, 2003) and Muuttuva sukupuoli (Volatile Gender, 2015). Her sub project within the Dark Side of Humour deals specifically with American film and television, and the ways intersectional violence is represented as a humorous component in character representations and storytelling, and thus presented as a legitimate way of problem solving in society.