Position:

Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (Finland)

Summary:

Mika Perkiömäki holds a PhD in Russian Language and Culture (Tampere University, 2021). His doctoral dissertation, Imagined Riverography of Late Twentieth-Century Russian Prose, is an ecocritical study of rivers in late Soviet and early post-Soviet Siberian Village Prose. In his postdoctoral projects he has studied the interrelationship of people and nature in North-Russian literature of the early Soviet period (Languages Unit, University of Helsinki) and practices of mediatized knowledge production and distribution of fossil and renewable energy in present-day Russia (Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki).

Research Focus:

• Russian language and culture
• Russian literature
• Russian Arctic
• Ecocritical studies
• Rivers in the Russian imagination
• Environmental journalism, media, and communication in Russia
• Russian environmental and climate discourses
• Nuclear fiction
• Climate fiction

Publications linked to the network:

• Dovbysh, Olga & Mika Perkiömäki. Forthcoming. Journalist/source relations in Russian environmental journalism. In Anna Maria Jönsson, Anna Rantasila & Mette Marie Roslyng (ed.): Constructed facts, contested truths: Environment and science communication in a hybrid media-scape. Routledge.
• Turoma, Sanna & Mika Perkiömäki. Forthcoming. Streaming Chernobyl: Mediated Battles over the Geopolitics of an Ecological Disaster. In Sigrid Kaasik-Krogerus, Saara Ratilainen & Sanna Turoma (ed.:) Eastern Europe and Eurasia in the Global Age: Narrating Geopolitics and Culture. Lexington Books.
• Dovbysh, Olga & Mika Perkiömäki. 2024. (De)politicization of the Environmental Agenda in Russian Media. Journalism. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14648849241284338.
• Perkiömäki, Mika. 2022. Between Pomor Traditions and Arctic Modernities: The Northern Sea in Early Soviet Pomor Literature. In Markku Lehtimäki, Arja Rosenholm, Elena Trubina & Nina Tynkkynen (ed.): Cold Waters: Tangible and Symbolic Seascapes of the North. Springer Polar Sciences. Cham: Springer, 147–163. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-10149-6_9.
• Perkiömäki Mika. 2021. Imagined Riverography of Late Twentieth-Century Russian Prose. Doctoral dissertation. Tampere University. http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-2012-6.
• Perkiömäki, Mika. 2021. Boris Šerginin pohjoinen [Boris Shergin’s North]. Idäntutkimus 28 (1), 3–19. https://doi.org/10.33345/idantutkimus.107838.
• Perkiömäki, Mika. 2020. The Anthropocene on Planet Water. Competing Views on Rivers and Geography in Sergey Zalygin’s Ekologicheskii roman. Slavonica 25 (1), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/13617427.2020.1754570.
• Perkiömäki, Mika. 2020. Rivers of Noosphere Stories: Russian Natural-Philosophical Prose as Cultural Ecology. The Soviet and Post-Soviet Review 47 (3), 257–284. https://doi.org/10.30965/18763324-20201369.
• Perkiömäki, Mika. 2018. Matka hukutetulla joella. Ympäristöoikeudenmukaisuus Valentin Rasputinin jokiproosassa [Journey on a drowned river. Environmental justice in Valentin Rasputin’s river prose]. In Markku Lehtimäki, Hanna Meretoja & Arja Rosenholm (ed.): Veteen kirjoitettu: veden merkityksiä kirjallisuudessa. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 305–332.
• Perkiömäki, Mika 2017. ”The Sovereign of the River and the Sovereign of All Nature—In the Same Trap”. The River in Viktor Astafiev’s Queen Fish. In Jane Costlow, Yrjö Haila & Arja Rosenholm (ed.): Water in Social Imagination: from Technological Optimism to Contemporary Environmentalism. Brill Rodopi, Leiden, Boston, 145–166. https://doi.org/10.1163/9789004333444_009.

Research projects:

• Current research project (2021–2024): FLOWISION – Best from both worlds: Enhancing energy transition in Russia and Finland by making resource flows visible. https://flowision.fi
• Previous research project (2019–2023):
• Northern Neighbours: Environment and Modernization in the Literatures of the Russian Arctic. https://www.helsinki.fi/en/projects/environment-and-modernization-literatures-russian-arctic