Finding the Right Answers in Fiction

Finding the Right Answers in Fiction
Nana Arjopalo gave an outstanding performance defending her doctoral dissertation Narrating Deliverance: The Literary Double in the Writing of Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Bharati Mukherjee on Friday, February 24, 2023. The viva was a true celebration of literature and the impact it has on humanity. Professor Joel Kuortti testing the connection, picture and ...

A DOCTORATE will be given for the completion and defense of a dissertation

A DOCTORATE will be given for the completion and defense of a dissertation
Susanna Mäkinen defended her doctoral dissertation, Stability and variation in the genre of runaway slave notices in American newspapers 1704-1865, on Friday 20 May 2022. While the never-tiring doctoral researchers of the English department have produced quite a few dissertation and vivas to accompany them in the recent years, Susanna was the first one to ...

75 Years of the Joys of English

75 Years of the Joys of English
The Department of English became a subject department at the University of Turku 75 years ago in 1946. In 1980, translation studies were transferred from Language Institutes into the university, and were merged with the philology departments in 2010. We celebrated this anniversary on Tuesday 14 December 2021. The Corona epidemic had postponed the occasion ...

Eating elephants 1

Eating elephants
Nearly 1.5 years into my doctoral studies, I have already encountered some sort of block. Things are just not progressing the way I would like, something is not working. I feel like I have read every possible piece of available research about my topic but starting the first article seems like a horrendous endeavor. What ...

Your thesis in three minutes

Your thesis in three minutes
Thursday 9 March was an exciting day on campus, as it was the day for the final of the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition, which was organized for the first time at the University of Turku.The competition was developed by the University of Queensland and the first 3MT competition was held at UQ in 2008. ...

ÅboutU seminar: Publishing

ÅboutU seminar: Publishing
In September 2015, Matti Peikola from the University of Turku and Adam Borch from Åbo Akademi University held a seminar for doctoral candidates. In a workshop held after the presentations, the participants called for more contact between doctoral candidates of UTU and ÅAU, and so a committee was created for this purpose. The committee members, ...

Postmodern feminist challenging of dominant discourses: Mehdi Ghasemi’s doctoral defence

Postmodern feminist challenging of dominant discourses: Mehdi Ghasemi’s doctoral defence
The second one of the two doctoral defences at the Department of English in the spring 2016 was Mehdi Ghasemi’s “Quest/ion of Identities in African American Feminist Postmodern Drama: A Study of Selected Plays by Suzan-Lori Parks”. The public examination of the dissertation took place at the University of Turku on 10 June, 2016. The ...

The transmission of early scientific writing: Mari-Liisa Varila’s doctoral defence

The transmission of early scientific writing: Mari-Liisa Varila’s doctoral defence
It is always a happy occasion for the whole department when a doctoral candidate defends their dissertation. This spring we were treated to not only one but two public examinations of doctoral dissertations. The first was that of Mari-Liisa Varila. On 28 May 2016, she defended her dissertation titled “In search of textual boundaries: A ...

Funding applications, Part 1: Finding funding opportunities 1

When you’re a first-time participant in the game of applying for research grants, it’s a good idea to ask around and learn a few tricks of the trade. This post explores online resources for finding suitable funding for your research and career stage, and it is first in a series of posts on how to ...

Upcoming event: MA Thesis Symposium

11 March, 10-12 Lecture room X The first MA Thesis Symposium of the English department was organised last year. Six speakers, from different Advanced Studies tracks, gave a ten-minute paper on their pro gradu projects. The audience consisted of students and staff members, and many good questions were answered after the presentations. The second MA ...