Elina Valovirta is a senior lecturer at the Department of English and holds the title of Docent at the University of Eastern Finland.

My research interests include Anglophone Caribbean literature, academic work, gender, sexuality, reader theory, affect, feminist pedagogy, Blue Humanities, and romance writing. My finished project (TIAS 2022-2024), Romancing the Caribbean, studies the conjuncture of sea and sexuality in Caribbean literature and culture in an effort to generate more ecologically sustainable views on both Caribbean seascapes and sexualities. Through an eclectic corpus of Caribbean women’s writing and popular romance fiction set in the Caribbean, the project focuses on the affective, emotional and gendered nature of the ways in which the literary market has romanced the Caribbean and its seas in recent years.

I teach courses on literary studies and academic writing, including the MA thesis seminar. I also supervise PhD theses and engage in curricular development thanks to my university teacher's pedagogical qualifications.