Dr Astrid Joutseno is a scholar, known as a writer and an award-winning songwriter as Astrid Swan. Her current research centers the grief of the dying, and the grief of those living with cancer. She studies them in life-writing, especially autobiographical expression. Dr Joutseno is currently developing concepts for the naming and recognition of the grief of the dying, which has largely remained unacknowledged in Grief Studies and in culture at large. Joutseno's research is part of the Finnish Research Council Project Counter-Narratives of Cancer: Shaping Narrative agency, 2023-2027 - https://sites.utu.fi/counternarratives/en/. In 2024-2025 Dr Joutseno was a visiting scholar at Oxford Centre for Life-Writing, Oxford University. 

In addition to studying grief in the context of illness and dying, Dr Joutseno explores grief as a cultural affect. In this strand of her research she employs creative methods of musical composition and creative writing. Joutseno studies the archival material of two Finnish women musicians of the 20th century: pianist Astrid Joutseno (1899-1962) and violinist Kerttu Wanne (1905-1963). Dr Joutseno started this research in 2023-2024 as the Fellow in Arts at the Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies.

Astrid Swan published her latest album D/other in 2021 (Soliti). For her album From the Bed and Beyond (2017) she was awarded the prestigious Teosto-Award in 2018. In 2019, her Finnish-language memoir Viimeinen kirjani: kirjoituksia elämästä (Nemo) was published. In 2024 Swan debuted as a novelist with Noitarakastaja (S&S).