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Narratives of Finnish Neutrality: Discourse Linguistic Perspectives on Language Use, Semantic Change and Discursive Breaking Points

The concept of neutrality in Finnish foreign policy has taken different shapes since the declaration of the country’s independence in 1917, including such disparate stances as passive conflict avoidance in times of war and freedom from alliances in times of peace on the one hand and an active mediating role in international conflicts on the other. My project analyses how meanings and narratives around neutrality as a foreign policy have been constructed in the Finnish public discourse, how these narratives have conceptualized Finland’s place within the Nordic and Baltic Sea regions and how they integrate into the overarching narratives of Finnish national identity.

- Olga Syrova, 17.03.2026

Moving Pictures – Movements in Pictures. Protest Photography in Germany and Sweden, 1880-1918

Photos of protests evoke different associations. Whether they are blurry photos on social media or Pulitzer Prize-winning photo documentation, they share the commonality of transcending spatial boundaries and their potential to become history themselves. This project investigates how photographs related to protest movements for labor rights, women’s suffrage, and conservation between 1880 and 1918 in Germany and Sweden generated narratives and counter-narratives of the protesters, complementing or undermining written reports.

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

Bodies, Violence, Gender Roles: Shifting Expectations of Clerical Behaviour in Medieval Scandinavia

My doctoral project focuses on the expectations of clerical behaviour, largely dictated by canon law and ecclesiastical discourse of the time. While certain desirable behaviours and lifestyles for members of the clergy were known and promoted by the Scandinavian church from its beginnings, there are numerous accounts of clerical misconduct, regular breaches of canon law and even long-term disregard for certain conventions. The reaction of the papacy and papal legates to these incidents varied from time to time, and at times there was even tolerance of clerical behaviour that was explicitly contrary to canon law.

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

Nature in Service of the Nation

How does literature shape national conceptions of nature? How are different nature types valued as regard to nation building – be it as an economic, or symbolic, asset? My PhD project arises from this question, and will combine literature geography, cultural memory studies, and digital humanities to examine how nature is constructed in the literature of Norway from 1814 to 1871.

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

The Coastal Town as a Topos in the Norwegian Novel of the Late 19th Century

A significant proportion of the authors we associate with the Modern Breakthrough in Norway (Bjørnson, Ibsen, Kielland, Lie, Skram, Garborg), seem to make use of the coast town, and other communities along the Norwegian coast, as literary settings. Few literary scholars have commented on why this particular spatial object gains influence. This leads me to ask: Who took part and helped shape the literary-geographical imaginary of the coast-town? Was it shaped also by non-canonized, ‘forgotten’ authors? Is there a special connection between ideology and form on the one hand, and the figure of the coast-town on the other?

- Olga Syrova, 22.11.2025

European Memory Conflicts Reflected in the Baltic Sea Region on the Example of “August 23rd”

"August 23rd", commemorating the historic date of the so-called Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, an agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, is both known as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Totalitarian and Authoritarian Regimes as well as the European Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and National Socialism. My project determines the debates surrounding “August 23rd” as an example for memory conflicts and for competitions over the (historical) authority of interpreting Europe’s violent history of the 20th century.

- Olga Syrova, 21.11.2025

From Ideology to Politics – German Occupation of Sámi Everyday Life 1940–45

During the occupation of Norway by the Nazis, Norway was granted a special position in the Nazi regime’s imagined post-war world order, based on a fabricated “Germanic shared destiny”. But how were the Sámi people viewed by Norwegian and German National Socialists within the framework of National Socialist racial ideology? What kind of contact was there between Sámi communities and the German occupying forces during the war, and how were the meetings influenced by this racial ideology?

- Olga Syrova, 21.11.2025

“The Home Born Anew: The Concept of ‘Heim’ in Nynorsk Poetics and Poetry.”

The word heim (the Nynorsk word for home) appears constantly in the poetry written by Nynorsk (New Norwegian, one of Norway’s official language forms) writers, from the 18th century to the middle of the 20th century. Its poetic meaning is ambiguous; sometimes topographical, religious, metaphysical, mythological or abstract, the motif of heim has become an important symbol in Nynorsk poetics. This thesis is concerned with the history of this symbol; how it has been shaped, its discursive meaning and the possibilities of meaning in poetic forms.

- Olga Syrova, 21.11.2025