Mia Korpiola is Professor of Legal History at the University of Turku. She also leads the Kone Foundation funded project “Speeding towards the Future: New Vehicles, Modernization and the Law in Finland, 1830-1950”. Her research deals with Finnish and Swedish legal history from the thirteenth to the twenty-first century from a comparative perspective. She has published on various topics ranging from the legal profession to family law, and from appellate courts to legal iconography.
Her most important publications related to the topic of this research project are: “On the Reception of the Ius Commune and Foreign Law in Sweden, ca. 1550-1615”, Clio@Thémis 2: Histoires des cultures juridiques. Circulations, connexions et espaces transnationaux du droit. (first published 2009). She has also published “Attempting to Advocate: Women Entering the Legal Profession in Finland, 1885-1915,” New Perspectives on European Women’s Legal History, eds. Sara L. Kimble and Marion Röwekamp, pp. 292-318. (Studies in Gender and History, Routledge, New York, 2017) and “Agnes Lundell: Suomen ensimmäinen oikeustutkinnon suorittanut nainen uusien lähteiden valossa” [Agnes Lundell: The First Finnish Woman with a Law Degree in the Light of New Sources], Rohkea kynä: Syntymäpäiväkirja Maria Lähteenmäelle 9.6.2017, eds. Oona Ilmolahti and Sinikka Selin, pp. 37-55. (Työväen historian ja perinteen tutkimuksen seura, Helsinki, 2017).
For her other publications, see: https://www.utu.fi/en/units/law/faculty/people/Pages/korpiola_mia.aspx
In this project, Mia Korpiola is going to write some articles on the topic of the project and a monograph Legal Literacy in Finland ca. 1800-1920. This monograph analyses legal literacy from the last years of Swedish rule until the Finnish independence building on all the findings of the project. This period allows observations of possible changes in legal literacy relating to the growth of the civic society due to nationalism and national identity-building, increasing role of Finnish as a legal language and stratification of the Finnish countryside, urbanization and professionalization. At the same time, legal literacy as human capital and intangible knowledge asset provided a way for social mobility in the community. The book will analyze the whole spectrum of legal literacy.