Niina Oisalo
PhD, M.A., YTM (MSSc)
niina.oisalo@utu.fi Arcanuminkuja 1 Turku ORCID identifier: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0622-6196 |
Blue humanities; documentary film; film studies; Nordic cinema; cultural memory studies; audiovisual analysis; video essay
Audiovisual Baltic Sea (Kone Foundation)
I work as a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Audiovisual Baltic Sea research project (Kone Foundation, 2026-2029, PI: Ilona Hongisto, Helsinki University). The project develops understanding of how the scientific interest of knowledge and the artistic expression intertwine in the audiovisual material touching the Baltic Sea.
I defended my thesis in December 2024 at the University of Turku (Media studies) on the aesthetics and politics of remembering "difficult pasts", such as war and colonialism, in contemporary Nordic documentary films. I also hold a Master of Arts degree in Documentary Practice from the Brunel University London (2010), and a Master in Social Sciences from the University of Tampere (2005), where I majored in International Relations and Journalism.
I have extensive experience from domestic, mostly scientific publications having worked as the Head of board at Eetos publishing from 2022, Member of the editorial board at Lähikuva journal from 2015 and Duty editor at Media & viestintä (2022-2023) and Ulkopolitiikka (2006-2009).
I have also worked as a freelance journalist, copy editor and creative writing instructor, as well as published audiovisual essays, video poetry and a poem collection (Valaan silmä, pilvien hai 2017).
My current interests at the Audiovisual Baltic Sea -project are focused on the oceanic imagination in the audiovisual and the practices of ecocritical listening.
In my article-based PhD, titled Traces, Gaps and Constellations: Acts of Remembering in the Contemporary Nordic Documentary Film (2024), I explored how films create relationships with pasts in the present while making use of temporal imagination as a non-linear mode of remembering. I investigated the aesthetics and politics involved in acts of remembering in five Nordic documentaries produced in the 2000s where documentary remembering emerges as an evocative and generative process that forms connections between people, places and different temporalities. In the research, documentary film was explored as a site for encounters, translations and transformations, where aesthetic and ethical potential of the documentary film as an act of remembering can be examined closer. The transdisciplinary research was situated in the crossroads between documentary film studies and memory studies, with important branches reaching to indigenous studies and film aesthetics.
University of Turku:
- course: Writing art critique, Autumn 2024
- course: Perspectives to film aesthetics, Autumn 2019
- SELMA writing circle: Dimensions of humanistic writing, Autumn 2018
- course: Poetics and politics of contemporary Nordic documentary +
practice-based workshop on documentary filmmaking, Autumn 2017
- lectures on various topics in film studies (2014-)
Turku Arts Academy:
- course on documentary film history, 2012-2013
- Pysäytyskuvia, takaumia ja aaltoja: Dokumentaarinen elokuva laajentaa ajallista mielikuvitusta (2025)
- Lähikuva
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal) - Electricity, attraction (2024) Oisalo, Niina
(I1 Audiovisual publication) - Electricity (2024)
- Allegra lab
(A2 Refereed review article in a scientific journal ) - Traces, gaps and constellations: Acts of remembering in contemporary Nordic documentary film (2024) Oisalo Niina
(G5 Article dissertation ) - Weather (2024)
- Allegra lab
(A2 Refereed review article in a scientific journal ) - Weather, diary of the body (2024) Oisalo, Niina
(I1 Audiovisual publication) - How does a film remember? Cinematic memory as a living constellation in El escarabajo de oro o Victorias Hämnd (2022)
- Journal of Aesthetics and Culture
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - KATJA GAURILOFF:”Voimme vihdoin kertoa omalla kielellämme ja elokuvan kielellä omia tarinoitamme
saamelaisuudesta” (2020)- Lähikuva
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal) - Lähikuva 2/2020: Pohjoinen (2020)
- Lähikuva
(C2 Editorial work for a scientific compilation book) - Pohjoista päin (2020)
- Lähikuva
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal) - Saamelaisuuden maisemissa. Kuulumisen ylirajaisuus Sámi Nieida Jojk ja Kuun metsän Kaisa -elokuvissa (2019) Kuulumisen reittejä taiteessa Niina Oisalo
(A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book) - Dokumenttiohjaajat tarinoivat elokuviensa taustoista. Kirja-arvio: Harri Römpötti: Sanokaa mitä näitte: Suomalaisen dokumenttielokuvan tekijät kertovat. 1918. ISBN: 978-951-884-664-5. (2018)
- Lähikuva
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal) - Enemies within: Reimagining the ‘Fallen Women’ of World War II in Contemporary Finnish Documentary (2018) The Enemy in Contemporary Film Niina Oisalo
(A3 Refereed book chapter or chapter in a compilation book) - Kirja-arvio: Elokuva utopioiden palveluksessa. Dokumentin utopiat : suomalaisen dokumentti- ja lyhytelokuvan historia 1944-1989 / Jari Sedergren & Ilkka Kippola. Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura, 2015. ISBN 978-952-222-400-2. (2018)
- Lähikuva
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal) - Cinematic worlding: Animating Karelia in Santra and the Talking Trees (2016)
- Journal of Scandinavian Cinema
(A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal) - JOUKO AALTONEN: ”Dokumenttielokuva on syvällä yhteiskunnallisissa käytännöissä” (2016)
- Lähikuva
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal) - Lähikuva 4/2016 (2016) Kaisa Hiltunen, Niina Oisalo
(C2 Editorial work for a scientific compilation book) - Rajantekoja, kaipausta, kapinaa (2016)
- Lähikuva
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal) - Elokuva on eläin – Kirja-arvio: John Anderson: Armoton kauneus – Pirjo Honkasalon elokuvataide. ISBN-13: 9789522341549 (2015)
- Lähikuva
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal) - Lehtonen, Mikko (2013) (ed.) Liikkuva maailma. Liike, raja, tieto, Tampere: Vastapaino, Tampereen yliopisto. 312 pp. ISBN 978-951-768-408-8 (2015)
- Nordic Journal of Migration Research
(B1 Non-refereed article in a scientific journal)



