Description of research and teaching

Current research interests

My current research interests include philosophy of democracy, democratic theory, freedom of speech, online hate speech, democratic debate and argumentation, anti-gender mobilizing, Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt.

Current Research Project

Anti-Gender Trouble - Concepts of Democracy in Conflict

Research Council of Finland (2024-2028)

The research project examines anti-gender mobilization in its relationship to democracy in Europe. The research combines the study of political theory with analysis of texts within the field of anti-gender "trouble", which consists of anti-gender actors, academic study of anti-gender, and EU politics that targets anti-gender mobilization. Instead of straightforwardly assuming anti-gender as a form of anti-democratic populism, the project analyses the use of the concepts of ‘majority', ‘minority and' ‘the people' in these texts. We expect the conceptual analysis to reveal a complicated array of conflicting ideas of democracy in relation to anti-gender mobilization and to open insights into understanding why precisely gender emerges in the field of struggles over the meaning of democracy. The project will create a new theoretical approach for researching the phenomenon of anti-gender. The results are expected to be of benefit in depolarizing political discussion.

Non-fiction book project

I am currently writing a non-fiction book about free speech. The project has received funding from Suomen Tietokirjailijat ry. and Oskar Öflunds Stiftelse. 

Previous research projects

Trans Futures: Theorizing Community Building as Resistance to Biopolitics (Academy of Finland and The Finnish Cultural Foundation 2019-2023)

A key point of examination of my current research project is the question of how shared representations of struggle shape the ways in which future and community are conceptualized. The project theorizes transgender resistance and agency in the plural, as multiple practices that are context-dependent, local and challenge predominant, pathologizing regimes of truth. The project complicates the simplistic logic of community as based either on identity-politics and recognition or subversive anti-futurity. A characteristic of trans community-building is care and memory preservation as a means of resisting state-legitimated and socially sanctioned forms of oppression and violence. The research project utilizes archival material in the US and the Nordic Countries.

• SPT-375 Introduction to feminist trans- and disability studies (in Finnish). Gender Studies, University of Helsinki, fall 2018.

• SPT-373 Feminist research on violence (in Finnish). Gender Studies, University of Helsinki, spring 2018.

• Introduction to Feminist Thought and Action. Teaching Assistant for Prof. Ann Snitov, gender studies, The New School, USA. Fall, 2015.

• WNA310 Feminist Interpretations of Hannah Arendt. Gender Studies, University of Helsinki, Spring 2014.

• FFI220 The history of the mind-body problem. Department of Theoretical Philosophy, University of Helsinki, spring, 2008.

• The History of the Philosophy of Mathematics (in Swedish). Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki, fall 2007.
  

I also conduct speaking engagements and educating in the areas of equality and diversity as well as hate speech encoutering in the work environment. You can book me by sending an e-mail to julian.honkasalo(at)helsinki.fi

Education information

• Ph.D in political theory, Department of Political Science, The New School for Social Research, USA, 2017. Advisor: Prof. Andreas Kalyvas.
• Ph.D in gender studies, Department of Philosophy, History, Culture and Art Studies, University of Helsinki, 2016. Advisor: Prof. Tuija Pulkkinen.
• MA in political science, Department of Political Science, The New School for Social Research (USA) 2010. Advisor: Prof. Andreas Kalyvas.
• MA in philosophy, Department of Philosophy, University of Helsinki, Finland, 2006. Advisor: doc. Martina Reuter.