Dr. Heidi Kosonen works as a post-doctoral researcher in Art History and Contemporary Culture Studies at the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥, Finland. Her research connects affect studies approaches to difficult emotions (disgust, hate speech) to social justice and taboo-related questions in contemporary culture. She defended her Ph.D. about the cinematic representations of voluntary death suicide and is currently focused on the question of planetary death in her personal post-doc. Kosonen has also worked on several research projects dealing with hate speech, counterspeech, uncomfortable affects and emotions, and social justice issues, both at the Ä¢¹½Ö±²¥ and at the University of Winnipeg, Canada. She is one of the founding members of the Disgust Network, editor-in-chief of the journal Sukupuolentutkimus/Genusforskning (2024-25), vice chair of The Society for Cultural Studies in Finland, and a longstanding board member of The Researchers and Teachers of Jyväskylä.
Research areas: taboo and biopower; difficult emotions (esp. disgust; hate speech); representations of suicide (esp. art history, cinema and television); denial of death (planetary death); equality, equity, and justice (including environmental, ecological and species justice); visual culture; cinema and television studies; intersectional feminism.