Intimacies beyond Identities
A Queer/Feminist Perspective on Practices of Relating
The project
Our project sets out to produce new knowledge on a variety of non- normative ways of intimate relating by queering, or rethinking through novel, non-normative perspectives, intimacies that matter to people in their daily lives in modern-day Finland. As an interdisciplinary collaboration between gender studies and art studies, our five subprojects focus on finding and exploring non-normative forms of intimacy among 1) non-monogamies, 2) monogamous heterosexuals, 3) communal living, 4) queer body art and 5) demisexuality.
Varpu Alasuutari
Photo: Sonja Siikanen
Varpu Alasuutari (PhD) is a postdoctoral researcher in Gender Studies at the University of Turku. Her dissertation focused on queer death studies, queer kinship studies and feminist affect theories, in addition to which she has also published on queer friendship. In the project Alasuutari will explore how different forms of non-monogamies are shaped by both physical and digital spaces as well as affective normativities around love, relationships and sexualities.
Anna Avdeeva
Anna Avdeeva, Ph.D. (Gender Studies, University of Helsinki), comes from Gender Studies and Sociology background. She specialises on non-conventional intimate relations and practices within the heterosexual family constellations. She is also interested in everyday practices, kinship, and new materialism. In her current research “Non-normative intimacies of monogamous heterosexuals” she inquires what and why constitutes non-normative in the monogamous heterosexuals’ understanding of intimate relations. She is interested in how such relations are practiced and experienced, and whether they have potential to challenge heteronormativity.
Anna Heinonen
Anna Heinonen (M.Soc.Sci.) is a doctoral researcher in Gender Studies at the University of Helsinki. Her doctoral research examines close relations lived in Finnish small-scale communes. She is interested in the ways domestic space reshapes intimate practices in friendship and roommate relations.
Ilmari Kortelainen
Photo: Jonne Renvall
Ilmari Kortelainen works as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Arts Helsinki’s Center for Educational Research and Academic Development in the Arts (CERADA). Ilmari’s research and practice has focused on body-awareness in meditation, somatics and in social affects of the body. He approaches these through body-phenomenology and affect theory. Ilmari has somatic training from ISLO and at the moment he studies in Satu Palokangas Somatic movement therapy and education. He is a practitioner of bodily practices, such as Yi quan, Zen-Buddhism as well as somatics.
Hannareeta Seling
Hannareeta Seling (MA) is a doctoral candidate in Gender Studies at the University of Helsinki. She is finalizing her doctoral dissertation in critical sexuality studies that explores heterosexual scripts, postfeminism and consent in relation to women’s sexual desire. In her next study she will focus on asexual relations, especially demisexuality.