Nine new postdoctoral researchers to join the School of Humanities

Altogether, these grants will bring more than €1.3 million in external research funding to TÜHI this year, contributing significantly to the school’s internationalisation and the growth of its research capacity.

The initiative was launched and is coordinated by Tanya Escudero, Research Fellow at the School of Humanities, who also serves as a trainer and provides feedback throughout the application process. According to the Director of the School, Uku Lember, the aim of the initiative is to create a supportive framework for early-career researchers with strong potential throughout the application process, to bring new ideas to the institute, and thereby raise the overall level of research.

“Since the launch of the programme, TÜHI has hosted 18 postdoctoral researchers. This year has been the most successful so far, both in terms of the number of applications and the number of funded projects. The results reflect strong cooperation between candidates, supervisors, trainers, and institutional support,” Lember added.

The research projects cover a wide range of fields within the humanities and social sciences, including cultural, memory, political, and historical studies, migration and border studies, environmental humanities, as well as literary and media analysis. Many of the projects address key global challenges of our time, such as climate change, geopolitical tensions, and social justice.

All selected researchers were supported through the School of Humanities’ MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship support programme, which is being held for the fourth time this year. The programme includes a five-day intensive grant writing seminar in June, where selected candidates develop their proposals together with trainers and supervisors. This is followed by several rounds of feedback and individual meetings until the submission of applications.

Funded postdoctoral researchers and projects:

• Elizabeth Oakes (MSCA) – Environmental Crisis and Vocabularies of Transformation in Japanese, Finnish, and Anglo-American Speculative Fiction
• Salvatore Giuffrè (ETAG) – The Semiotics of Fox-like Creatures: Intertextual and Translanguaging Readings of Early Sino-Japanese Folklore Texts
• Takehiro Okabe (ETAG) – Pan-Finnism Ideology, Finno-Ugric Networks, and Emotion in Soviet Estonia, 1944–1963
• Arya Priyadarshini (ETAG) – Trauma, Risk, and Anticipatory Anxiety in Climate Environments – Himalayan Focus
• Mattia Dello Spedale Venti (ETAG) – Okinawa's Alternative Geopolitical View of 21st century Indo-Pacific Dynamics
• Lelde Luika (ETAG) – Radical Futures: Revisiting Late Socialist Imaginaries of Systemic Transformation
• Marion Moussier (ETAG) – Climate Change, Slow Violence and Environmental (In)justice in Post-2010 Anglophone Novels
• Neha Meena (ETAG) – Kinship Ties, Bordering Practices, and Transnational Migration across Borders
• Olga Dorokhina (ETAG) – Cross-Border Cooperation as Mnemonic Infrastructure in European Borderlands