The research project of Liisa Vuonokari studies the role of the archives and other memory organizations in the East Karelia, occupied by Finns 1941 – 1944. The military administration of East Karelia included an office called the war booty archives, charged with the task of collecting, storing, and cataloguing archive materials.
Her work The East Karelia war booty archives as an element of the East Karelia occupation policy in 1941-1944 bases on the idea, that the decisions related to archive storage always envisage decisions on what is important, valuable, and worth remembering. However, the subjectivity of the decisions is often hidden behind the façade of the archive organizations. The stored archival materials are easily seen as natural entities, and the mere fact that they end up under the auspices of the archive institution tends to add to their weight. The objective of her research is to dismantle the seeming neutrality of the archives, analyzing the power used in the archives to interpret history. In the context of the occupation of East Karelia that raises questions like: What was the nature of the past that Finnish East Karelia would have through the materials stored? Who were the parties and persons involved in this work, and what were their objectives?