Julian Honkasalo

Current research project:

Trans Futures: Theorizing Community Building as Resistance to Biopolitics (Academy of Finland 2019-2022)

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.

I am interested in biopolitics, social and political constructions of the fit and able-bodied citizen, dynamics of racialization as well as feminist disability studies, transgender reproductive justice, self-determination and theorization of resistance. My research approach and interests are multidisciplinary and stem from personal interests in human rights activism.

My latest publication can be downloaded and read at:

The intimate labour of non-normative bodies: Transgender patients in early Swedish medical research

My research project is funded by Kone Foundation and is carried out at the University of Helsinki, Department of Gender Studies.

• 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.

• 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.