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Project leader

Ville Kivimäki

Senior Research Fellow
Faculty of Social Sciences
Tampere University
ville.kivimaki@tuni.fi

https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3923-4771

About me

From January 2024 onwards, I'm the research director of the Finnish Literature Society in Helsinki. At Tampere University, I lead the Research Council of Finland's research project "Unequal War: Vulnerability, Stress and Survival in the Finnish Army during World War II" (2023–2027).

Research topics

Social and cultural history of the Second World War

Experience, memory, emotion and trauma as the objects of history

History of nationhood and nationalism

Gender history, especially war and masculinities in the twentieth century

History of psychiatry and psychology in Finland and Germany

Experiences of violence and the postwar society

Research unit

HEX – Research Council of Finland's Centre of Excellence in the History of Experiences

Project links

Unequal War (UnWar)

Project members

Virva Liski

Researcher
Faculty of Social Sciences
Tampere University
+358504412316
virva.liski@tuni.fi

Ilari Taskinen

Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Faculty of Social Sciences
Tampere University
+358503262530
ilari.taskinen@tuni.fi

More information

About me

I am a socio-cultural historian of war. My primary research interest lies in exploring novel approaches to studying historical war experiences using large digital datasets. My research focuses currently on the demographic history of World War II and its aftermath in Finland. I work in project “Unequal War: Vulnerability, Stress and Survival in the Finnish Army during World War II”, funded by the Research Counsil of Finland 2023–2027, that examines the socially uneven demographic consequences of World War II in Finland. Together with epigenetics researchers, we are also investigating the transgenerational effects of Finnish soldiers' war stress in project “TREES – Transgenerational Epigenetic Effects of War Stress”. I have also studied wartime letter writing and intimate relationships, which were the topics of my PhD dissertation "Social Lives in Letters: Finnish soldiers' epistolary relationships, intimate practices, and emotionality in World War II" (Tampere University, 2021). Later I worked in and led project “DIGIKÄKI – Digital History and Handwritten Sourced”, in which we digitized wartime letters and analyze them quantitatively.

Research topics

Social and cultural history of World War II

Demographic history of war

Wartime letter writing and intimate relationships

Digital history

Project links

Selected publications

Books

Taskinen, Ilari 2024: Terveiseni täältä jostakin. Suomalaissotilaiden kirjeenvaihto talvi- ja jatkosodassa. Gaudeamus.

Tikka, Marko, Ilari Taskinen & Seija-Leena Nevala-Nurmi (eds.) 2015: Kirjeitä sodasta. Kirjoittamisen tavat ja merkitykset kriisiaikoina. Postimuseo & Tampereen Historiallinen Seura.

Dissertation

Taskinen, Ilari 2021: Social Lives in Letters: Finnish soldiers' epistolary relationships, intimate practices, and emotionality in World War II. PhD dissertation in history, Tampere University.

Articles

Ilari Taskinen 2025: "Tampereen sotauhrit 1939–1945". In Ihmisten tekemä kaupunki. Tampere tutkimuksia ja kuvauksia XIII. Eds. Mervi Kaarninen, Henrik Mattjus, Marko Tikka & Ella Viitaniemi. Tampere: Vastapaino, 161–179.

Taskinen, Ilari 2025: “Ihmisenä vai sankarina sodassa? Maskuliinisuus törmää sotakokemuksiin”. In Sinivalkoisia sotureita. Suomalaismiehet asevelvollisina, sotilaina ja veteraaneina. Ed. Marko Tikka. Vastapaino.

Kivimäki Ville, Liski Virva & Taskinen, Ilari 2025: “Predisposed vulnerabilities and survival among the Finnish soldiers of World War II: historical life course approach”. Front. Sociol. 9:1495009.

Turunen , Risto & Taskinen, Ilari 2024: “Mining Historical Emotions”. Digital Handbook of the History of Experience.

Taskinen, Ilari 2023: "Personal advertising and dating culture in World War II Finland". The History of the Family 29(4), 482–505 .

Taskinen, Ilari 2023: Construction of the Finnish Army in World War II Database. Historical Life Course Studies 13, 44–60.

Turunen, Risto, Ilari Taskinen, Lauri Uusitalo & Ville Kivimäki 2022: “Mining Emotions from the Finnish War Letter Collection, 1939–1944”. Digital Humanities in the Nordic and Baltic Countries Publications 4 (1): 135–44.

Taskinen Ilari, Turunen Risto, Uusitalo Lauri & Kivimäki Ville 2022, “Religion, Patriotism and War Experience in Digitized Wartime Letters in Finland, 1939–44”. Journal of Contemporary History 57:3, 577–596.

Taskinen, Ilari 2018: “Kokemuksista ylirajaisuuteen. Sotahistorian uudet virtaukset ja kansainväliset keskustelut 1990-luvulta tähän päivään”. Historiallinen aikakauskirja 116:4: 384–393.

Taskinen, Ilari 2015: “Sota-ajan kirjekulttuuri ja kirjeiden kokemusten tulkinta”. In Kirjeitä sodasta. Kirjoittamisen tavat ja merkitykset kriisiaikoina. Eds. Marko Tikka, Ilari Taskinen & Seija-Leena Nevala-Nurmi. Postimuseo & Tampereen Historiallinen Seura.

Hagelstam, Sonja & Taskinen Ilari 2015: "Hiljaisuuden myytit. Postisensuuri, vaikeneminen ja etulinjan kokemukset sota-ajan kirjeissä". In Kirjeitä sodasta. Kirjoittamisen tavat ja merkitykset kriisiaikoina. Eds. Marko Tikka, Ilari Taskinen & Seija-Leena Nevala-Nurmi. Postimuseo & Tampereen Historiallinen Seura.

Marko Tikka, Ilari Taskinen & Seija-Leena Nevala-Nurmi 2015: “Kirjeiden tutkimaton maailma”. In Kirjeitä sodasta. Kirjoittamisen tavat ja merkitykset kriisiaikoina. Eds. Marko Tikka, Ilari Taskinen & Seija-Leena Nevala-Nurmi. Postimuseo & Tampereen Historiallinen Seura.

Taskinen, Ilari 2013: “Sopeutumiskyvyn dokumentit — Sota-ajan kirje kokemuksen jäsentäjänä”. Sotahistoriallinen aikakauskirja 33: 60–77.