I am a doctoral researcher in Comparative Literature/Literary Studies. My research interests include environmental literature and film, science fiction, and posthuman ecocriticism. I was employed by the doctoral program in History, Culture and Arts Studies, Juno (2021-2024). I have worked on grants for my dissertation as well.

In my monograph, I investigate water in outer space science fiction literature and cinema. I delve into the discussions of the Anthropocene, nonhuman agency, ecological trauma, and gender in the narratives imagined in geographies beyond Earth. My research focuses on the imaginaries of water and ice and their entanglements with human bodies and is informed by new materialism, posthuman feminism, and postcolonial studies.

My research attempts to see how the alienating and transcendental tropes of water and outer space in narratives located beyond our planet reproduce environmental anxieties, offer alternatives to power hierarchies, and challenge the dominant anthropocentric perceptions in fiction. I examine Isaac Asimov’ “The Martian Way” (1952), Greg Egan’s “Oceanic” (1998), Joan Slonczewski’s A Door into Ocean (1986) and films Interstellar (2014) and Star Wars: Episode II – Attack of the Clones (2002).

YKIR6128: Environmental Literature and Film: Science Fiction Narratives (Spring 2022)

YKIR4242: Speculative Fiction and Film: Ecocritical Readings (Spring 2023)

YKIR6345: Evolutions and Ecologies in Science Fiction (Autumn 2024), co-taught with Dr. Kaisa Kortekallio