Keynote speakers

"How They May Be or May Not Be Understood"

Michael Hitchcock is Professor in Cultural Policy and Tourism at the Institute for Creative and Cultural Entrepreneurship at Goldsmiths, University of London, United Kingdom. He took his BAHons in Social Anthropology at Queen's University Belfast and then completed doctorate at the Pitt Rivers Museum at the University of Oxford. The bulk of his research has been in Southeast Asia and China, though he has also made a small contribution on Europe and East Africa. He has around 200 outputs, including over 50 refereed journal papers and 14 written and edited books. The latter includes (with K. Teague) Souvenirs: The Material Culture of Tourism (University of North London 2000, Ashgate 2004). He hopes to contribute a comparative paper on Lapland and Bali.

 

"The life of tourist souvenirs: From the holiday experience to everyday life"

Dr. Julie Masset is a lecturer in Marketing at the Faculty of Economics, Social Sciences, and Business Administration at the University of Namur, in Belgium. She completed her PhD on “The recontextualization of special possessions in time, space, and the social environment: The case of tourist souvenirs” in 2015. Following a qualitative naturalistic interpretive approach, her doctoral dissertation explores the processes through which meanings are given to tourist souvenirs and how these meanings evolve through time and space. Taken together, her findings bring a holistic and dynamic perspective to the relationships between consumers and their tourist special possessions. Her research interests include contemporary consumption phenomena, leisure and tourism marketing, and qualitative methods.

“From Personal Souvenirs to Museum Objects. Shifting Meanings between Congo and Finland in the Early 20th Century”

Professor Leila Koivunen (European and World History, the University of Turku, Finland) is specialized in the history of cultural encounters and the processes of intercultural knowledge formation, especially between Africa and Europe. Her doctoral dissertation, Visualizing Africa in Nineteenth-Century British Travel Accounts (Routledge 2009), traced the roots of stereotyped European imagery of Africa by focusing on the practices of visual representation and illustration processes. More recently, she has conducted research on history of collecting and displaying foreign material cultures in Finnish context (Eksotisoidut esineet ja avartuva maailma. Suomen ulkopuoliset kulttuurit näytteillä Suomessa 1870–1910-luvuilla SKS, 2015). This research focused on certain key institutions in Finland, especially the National Museum of Finland and the Finnish Missionary Society, and their changing and sometimes unorthodox practices of dealing with the assumingly exotic collections in their possession. A significant proportion of these artefacts had ended up to Finland as personal souvenirs. Koivunen is also interested in the history of Finnish involvement in colonial activities during the period of Russian rule and the ways in which attitudes closely connected to colonialism were mediated to Finland.

"Authentic duodji? Controlling the traditional knowledge of Sámi handicrafts"

PhD Sigga-Marja Magga (The Giellagas Institute for Saami studies, University of Oulu, Finland) is a researcher of Sámi handicrafts, duodji. She is particularly interested in the impacts of institutionalization of handicraft traditions. The Sámi craft tradition is constantly changing, not only in terms of use and techniques of production but also in terms of cultural and social meanings. Traditional handicraft is an instrument of identity politics and economic interests, which are closely regulated by various institutions. The meanings of traditional handicraft are thus linked to the way in which the Sámi understand the concept of tradition, and on the other hand, how different social changes create pressure, for example, to protect the traditional handicraft. Magga is also interested in the relationship between institutionalized handicraft and the growth of cultural and social polyphony among Sámis, and how cultural polyphony and equality are realized in handicraft tradition.

"Different meanings of souvenirs in the collections of South Karelia Museum"

Reija Eeva is a cultural historian (M.A.), Conservator (B.A.) and working as Head of Collections and Research in Lappeenranta Museums (Finland). Reija Eeva has been working as a curator responsible for museums object collection in Lappeenranta Museums since 2009. Reija Eeva is interested in stories behind the museum objects and has written about souvenirs in the South Karelia Museum Collections in the museum's latest publication Menneisyyden kaihoa ja merkityksiä - Kirjoituksia Etelä-Karjalan museon kokoelmista (2019).