Bio
Suvi Salmenniemi is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Turku. Her fields of interest include therapeutic culture and wellbeing, political sociology, feminist theory, cultural studies, and the sociology of class and inequality. She is principal investigator of the research project “Tracking the Therapeutic: Ethnographies of Wellbeing, Politics and Inequality”, funded by the Academy of Finland (2015-2019). Her ongoing research, drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Finland, addresses the lived experience of therapeutic practices (e.g. life coaching, empowerment groups, self-improvement classes, and alternative spiritual and health services). More specifically, the study interrogates (1) experiences of and motivations for using therapeutic practices, (2) the conceptions and strategies of wellbeing and politics involved and articulated in therapeutic engagements, (3) and the ways in which therapeutic practices may both produce and contest gendered, classed and racialized inequalities.
Selected publications:
Salmenniemi, Suvi (in print) ‘We can’t live without beliefs’: self and society in therapeutic engagements. The Sociological Review.
Tiaynen-Qadir, Tatiana & Salmenniemi, Suvi (in print) Self-help as a glocalised therapeutic assemblage. European Journal of Cultural Studies.
Adamson, Maria & Salmenniemi, Suvi (2017) 'The Bottom line is that the problem is you': Aesthetic labour, postfeminism and subjectivity in Russian self-help literature. In Ana Sofia Elias, Rosalind Gill & Christina Scharff (eds) Aesthetic Labour: Beauty Politics in Neoliberalism. London: Palgrave.
Salmenniemi, Suvi & Adamson, Maria (2015) New heroines of labour. Domesticating postfeminism and neoliberal capitalism in Russia. Sociology 49:1, 88-105.
Salmenniemi, Suvi & Mariya Vorona (2014) Reading Self-Help Literature in Russia: Governmentality, Psychology and Subjectivity. British Journal of Sociology 69:1, 43-63.
Salmenniemi, Suvi (2012) Post-Soviet khoziain: Class, Self and Morality in Russian Self-help Literature. In Salmenniemi, S. (ed.) Rethinking Class in Russia. Ashgate, Farnham & London.
Salmenniemi, Suvi (2010) In search of a New (Wo)man: Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Russian Self-Help Literature. In Rosenholm, A., Nordenstreng, K. & Trubina, E. (eds) Russian Media and Changing Values. Routledge, London & New York.
Suvi Salmenniemi is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Turku. Her fields of interest include therapeutic culture and wellbeing, political sociology, feminist theory, cultural studies, and the sociology of class and inequality. She is principal investigator of the research project “Tracking the Therapeutic: Ethnographies of Wellbeing, Politics and Inequality”, funded by the Academy of Finland (2015-2019). Her ongoing research, drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork in Finland, addresses the lived experience of therapeutic practices (e.g. life coaching, empowerment groups, self-improvement classes, and alternative spiritual and health services). More specifically, the study interrogates (1) experiences of and motivations for using therapeutic practices, (2) the conceptions and strategies of wellbeing and politics involved and articulated in therapeutic engagements, (3) and the ways in which therapeutic practices may both produce and contest gendered, classed and racialized inequalities.
Selected publications:
Salmenniemi, Suvi (in print) ‘We can’t live without beliefs’: self and society in therapeutic engagements. The Sociological Review.
Tiaynen-Qadir, Tatiana & Salmenniemi, Suvi (in print) Self-help as a glocalised therapeutic assemblage. European Journal of Cultural Studies.
Adamson, Maria & Salmenniemi, Suvi (2017) 'The Bottom line is that the problem is you': Aesthetic labour, postfeminism and subjectivity in Russian self-help literature. In Ana Sofia Elias, Rosalind Gill & Christina Scharff (eds) Aesthetic Labour: Beauty Politics in Neoliberalism. London: Palgrave.
Salmenniemi, Suvi & Adamson, Maria (2015) New heroines of labour. Domesticating postfeminism and neoliberal capitalism in Russia. Sociology 49:1, 88-105.
Salmenniemi, Suvi & Mariya Vorona (2014) Reading Self-Help Literature in Russia: Governmentality, Psychology and Subjectivity. British Journal of Sociology 69:1, 43-63.
Salmenniemi, Suvi (2012) Post-Soviet khoziain: Class, Self and Morality in Russian Self-help Literature. In Salmenniemi, S. (ed.) Rethinking Class in Russia. Ashgate, Farnham & London.
Salmenniemi, Suvi (2010) In search of a New (Wo)man: Gender and Sexuality in Contemporary Russian Self-Help Literature. In Rosenholm, A., Nordenstreng, K. & Trubina, E. (eds) Russian Media and Changing Values. Routledge, London & New York.