I was awarded my PhD in 2024. In my doctoral dissertation The Storyteller of the Possible: Music and Narrative Ethics of Singer-Songwriter Christina Rosenvinge, I examined the ethical possibilities of popular music in history through the authorship and works of Spanish singer-songwriter Christina Rosenvinge (b. 1964) from the early 1980s to the 2020s. I was interested in how narratives in popular music gain meaning from an ethical perspective and what role the artist plays in this process in the context of a particular time and place. I combined approaches from cultural history, hermeneutic narrative ethics and feminist studies, and explored questions related to the intersection of memory and power.

In addition to the English-language dissertation monograph, I have co-edited three anthologies in English and in Finnish: Women in Rock Memoirs: Music, History, and Life-Writing (eds. Garrigós, Cristina and Ahonen, Marika. Oxford University Press 2023); Kulttuurihistorian tutkimus: lähteistä menetelmiin ja tulkintaan. (In English: Cultural history research: from sources to methods and interpretation, eds. Mähkä Rami, Ahonen Marika, Heikkilä Niko, Ollitervo Sakari, Räsänen Marika. Cultural history 2022) and Toivon ja Raivon vuosi 1968 (In English: The Year of Hope and Fury 1968, eds. Leskelä-Kärki, Maarit; Ahonen, Marika; Heikkilä, Niko. Society for the Study of Labour History and Tradition 2019).

I have also addressed the ethics of narratives and the themes of myths and gender in my article on the history of meaning of the siren, "Sirens, Narrative Ethics, and Christina Rosenvinge's 'Mi vida bajo el agua'" (Cultural History, Edinburgh University Press, 2023), which won the ISCH (International Society for Cultural History) essay prize in 2022.

I have focused on the study of cultural narratives and memory, especially memoirs and other life-writing sources by women musicians. I have also developed expertise in a wide range of materials and methods from cultural history, ethics, art, gender history and micro-history. My research interests include the connection between popular music and identity, the relation of gender to agency, and the fields of narrative ethics and power mechanisms. I am also interested in the history of Spain and Spanish-speaking countries and drawn to the areas of phenomenology and hermeneutics.

I co-led the Popular Culture seminar for cultural history MA students with Heidi Hakkarainen in 2020-2021 and Pekka Kolehmainen in 2019-2020.

I worked as an assistant teacher in the Cultural History writing course in spring 2018.