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Research project My Countryside aims to capture experiences, emotions, stories and everyday life in the countryside, providing a fresh approach to rural history in Finland. The project explores changes in attitudes towards the Finnish countryside in the 1990s and 2020s by using oral history and participatory methods. 

Particular attention will be paid at the presence of history, sensory memories, and place-attachment in the lives of different generations. The project aims at a multifaceted analysis of the concept of countryside by taking into account the diversity of experiences, as well as transgenerational, gendered and material dimensions of belonging in the countryside. 

In addition, the project aims at enhancing oral history methods. We will investigate whether different types of data, such as individual interviews, memory data produced in groups and workshops, photographs and written memories open up different perspectives on the study of experience, and how different types of data can be combined methodologically. The multidisciplinary project combines historical and ethnological research with sociological and neo-materialist perspectives. 

The results of the project are published in scientific publications and, in a museum exhibition "My countryside", to be opened at the Finnish Museum of Agriculture Sarka in October 2024.