Hanna-Leena Määttä

Hanna-Leena Määttä holds the title of Docent of Literary and Cultural Studies at the University of Oulu, where she completed her PhD in Literature and has also worked as a Senior Lecturer and researcher. She has additionally served as a Senior Lecturer in Literature at the University of Jyväskylä and as a visiting researcher at Utrecht University in the Netherlands (The Institute of Cultural Inquiry).

Määttä studies literature and the literary field in relation to transnational phenomena and cross-boundary dynamics, as well as cultural memory, through which communities remember their experiences and difficult events of the past. Her research focuses on issues of migration, diaspora, belonging, differences and otherness in literature and the literary field Finland.

Currently, she works as a researcher in the interdisciplinary project Margins of Memory: The Legacies of the Lapland War And Reconstruction (2022–2026, funded by the Kone Foundation, PI Outi Autti), focusing on the remembrance of World War II in Sámi and Finnish literature.

Previously, Määttä has contributed to several interdisciplinary research projects, where she has examined the knowledge-producing projects related to the literary work of Koko Hubara and Pajtim Statovci (The Knowledge of the Novel, 2022–2024, the Kone Foundation, PI Markku Lehtimäki), the cosmopolitan worldview in Tove Jansson’s later works (Tove Jansson’s Productions, 2018–2021, the Kone Foundation, PI Jussi Ojajärvi), and the remembrance of displacement and diaspora in Karelian evacuee literature (Recognition and Belonging: Forced Migration, Troubled Histories and Memory Culture, the Academy of Finland, PI Seija Jalagin) as well as the transnationality of Finnish literary culture (The Transnational Connections of Finnish Literary Culture, 2012–2013, Kone Foundation, PI Olli Löytty). Her doctoral dissertation, "The Word 'Immigrant' Has a Slightly Bitter Aftertaste": The Transnationalization of Literary Life in Early 21st-Century Finland (2016), examined works by immigrant authors and the transnationalization of Finland’s literary culture in the 21st century.

Määttä has taught literature at undergraduate, intermediate, and advanced levels, gender studies at undergraduate and intermediate levels, and supervised bachelor's, master's, and doctoral theses in literature. She has gained international teaching experience at the University of Oulu, Babeș-Bolyai University (Cluj-Napoca, Romania), and as the director and lead instructor of the Finnish Literature Summer Course organized by the Finnish National Agency for Education at the University of Jyväskylä.

In addition, Määttä has been active in the academic community, serving as Chair of the Finnish Literary Research Society (2017–2020). Starting in 2025, she will act as Chair of the Botnia Literary Prize jury.

(Photo: Harri Tarvainen)