In this research project Salla will conduct her postdoctoral research working on epistemic habits, societal relevance and the politics of knowledge production by critically assessing what kinds of theoretical, political and ethical investments and positionalities, imagined and real, are made through a particular delineation of “proper objects” in feminist queer and anti-racist spaces within gender studies. By attending to relevance as formed by what Robyn Wiegman has called a political imaginary of the alternative and as an affective, political form of investment, her project discusses what is at stake in how visions of relevance, aspirations of hope and a commitment to political and ethical change is formulated, expressed and felt within the field of gender studies. By attending to both academic and activist case studies the project focuses on questions of critique, whiteness, racialization, cultural forms of identification and disidentification, collectivity and desire. Methodologically the project works with memory work among academics, students and activists, as well as ethnography and participant observation.
Salla’s work on intersectionality, racialization, whiteness, homonationalism, polarization and feminist and queer theory has been published in Sexualities, NORMA: International Journal of Masculinity Studies, NORA – Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research, Policy Futures in Education, and Feminist Encounters: A Journal of Critical Studies in Culture and Politics.
For an updated list of publications click here.