Kaisa Vehkalahti joined Ģֱ as a Senior Lecturer in autumn 2021. She is PI for multidisciplinary research group focusing on rural history and changing rural youth in the Nordic countries, funded by projects My Countryside: Intergenerationality, Place and Gender (Kone Foundation, 2021-2025) and The Future of Nordic Youth in Rural Regions: A Cross-National Qualitative Longitudinal Study in Four Nordic Countrie (Future Challenges in the Nordics -program, 2022–2026). She is Associate Professor (docent) of Cultural and Social History in the Universities of Lapland (since 2020) and Oulu (since 2015).
Vehkalahti specialises in history of childhood, youth and education; research ethics, and 19th and 20th century Finnish history. Her current research interests focus on qualitative longitudinal youth studies, rural history and oral history.
Vehkalahti received her PhD from the department of Cultural History, University of Turku, in 2008. She has also studied in the Netherlands Research School of Women's Studies (NOV), in the University of Utrecht. Vehkalahti has previously worked as an Academy Research Fellow and University Lecturer at the University of Oulu, History (2017-2021), as Research Manager of the Finnish Youth Research Society, funded by the Ministry of Education and Culture (2008–2017), and as a coordinator of the Turku Institute for Child and Youth Research (CYRI, 2005-2007). She has been the editor-in-chief of Kasvatus & Aika, Finnish peer-reviewed journal in History of Education, and contributes in the editorail boards of several peer reviewed journals in the field. Vehkalahti has been affiliated as a visiting researcher at the University of Linköping, Sweden (Child Studies / Tema Barn, 2014) and at the University of Melbourne, Australia (Graduate school of education, 2022).
Professional and community activities:
- Finnish publication forum JUFO (Panel 23 History, archaeology and cultural studies), panel member 2018–2024
- Ethics Committee of Youth and Childhood Studies in Finland, 2021–2023
- Finnish National Library Board of Digital Humanities, board member 2021–2024
- Society for Cultural History, vice chair 2021-
- Barn – Forskning om barn og barndom i Norden, country editor 2020–2022, member of editorial board since 2022
- Nordic Journal of Educational History, member of editorial board since 2019
- Kasvatus & Aika, Finnish journal for History of Education, editor in chief 2014-2017, member of editorial board since 2017
- Finnish Historical Society, invited research fellow member since 2016
PhD supervision:
- Essi Jouhki, 2020: Teinikuntatoiminnan sukupolvet : muistitietohistoria oppikoulujen koululaisliikkeestä 1950–1970-luvuilla. University of Oulu.
- Helena Ristaniemi, 2023: ”Täällä on merkitystä mihin sukuun synnyt, se vaikuttaa kaikkeen.” Historiatietoisuuden muotoutuminen ja merkitykset Suomen saamelaisalueen tyttöjen elämässä. University of Oulu.
- Virpi Vainio, Cultural History, University of Lapland: Northern identities in the Post-war fiction by women authors (on-going 2020-)
- Riitta-Ilona Pummi-Kuusela, Ģֱ: Images of childhood virtues and the virtuous child in the Finnish children’s literature, 1850-1939 (on-going 2022-)
