Merja Polvinen

Description of research and teaching

My research focuses on interdisciplinary literary studies, from complex systems dynamics in English literature (Reading the Texture of Reality, 2008), to my current work in cognitive narratology. Most lately, my research has been on 2nd-generation (enactive) cognitive approaches to literature, and this work can be found in the book out in the Routledge series on Cognitive Humanities: Self-Reflective Fiction and 4E Cognition: An Enactive Approach to Literary Artifice (2023). I teach compulsory courses in literary studies and academic writing, as well as option courses and seminars in narratology, cognitive literary studies, contemporary English metafiction, and speculative fiction. I also supervise PhD dissertations on these and similar topics.
         I was part of the original steering group of the Cognitive Futures in the Arts and Humanities network and a member of the Narrating Complexity network organised by the University of York. I was also one of the team PIs in the consortium Instrumental Narratives: Limits of Storytelling and New Story-Critical Narrative Theory (iNARR), funded by the Research Council of Finland 2018-2022. 
       Currently I am a member of the Executive Council for the International Society for the Study of Narrative (ISSN, 2022-2025), of the HSSH-funded research group Enhancing and Reassessing Enactivism (ERE, 2024), and PI of the Method and Matter network for literary studies within the University of Helsinki (2024-). I'm also collaborator in the Durham University's Narrative and Cognition Lab.

Teaching in 2024-2025

• BA Programme in Languages (English):
• Individual study guidance (HOPS) and portfolio work
  
  
• MA Programme in English Studies:
• MA Thesis Seminar in Literature
• ENG-Opt353 Science Fiction and Fantasy

(On research leave autumn term 2024)

Fediverse (Mastodon): @[email protected]

Photo: Johan Wahlgren for SCAS