Reima Välimäki
PhD / FT, Dos.
rsmval@utu.fi +358 29 450 2296 +358 50 590 4538 Arcanuminkuja 1 Turku : A219 |
Medieval History; History of Heresy and Inquisition; History of Persecution; Digital Humanities; Medievalism; Historiography; The Great Western Schism (1378-1417); codicology and palaeography.
I am an Academy Research Fellow (2023–2027) at the Department of Cultural History. I obtained my PhD in Cultural History at the University of Turku in 2016. My doctoral dissertation was on late medieval heresy and the German inquisitor Petrus Zwicker, and I did my research in the Finnish Doctoral Programme of History and in the Academy of Finland project Modus vivendi: Religious Reform and the Laity in Late Medieval Europe. During my doctoral studies, I spent one academic year as a visiting scholar at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal in Germany and several research periods at the Finnish Institute in Rome. 2016–2018 I was a part-time secretary of the Institutum Romanum Finlandiae Foundation. In addition, I actively engage in public history: since 2015, I have worked as the historical expert of the Medieval Turku festival, and I have taken part in two public history projects: Vihan pitkät jäljet on the long history of hate speech (2017–2018), and Vammaisuuden vaiettu historia on disability history (2017–2019). From 2020 to 2022, I was a postdoctoral research fellow at Turku Institute for Advanced Studies (TIAS), focusing on the late medieval polemical literature.
My main research interests are the history of heresy, inquisition, polemical literature and persecution, the Great Western Schism, as well as Finnish medievalism and historiography. A book based on my dissertation, Heresy in Late Medieval Germany: The Inquisitor Petrus Zwicker and the Waldensians was published by York Medieval Press in 2019. As a postdoctoral researcher, I started to combine computational analyses with the methods of history and manuscript studies. I was involved in a digital humanities consortium Profiling Premodern Authors, applying computational authorship attribution to ancient and medieval Latin literature. My three-year postdoctoral project at the Turku Institute for Advance Studies (2020–2022 was about textual influences, compilation, imitation and originality in late medieval polemical treatises. In 2019–2022 I led a project PSEUDOHISTORIA, studying medievalism, history culture and history politics in Finland and Russia. The project was funded by Emil Aaltonen Foundation. In the course of the project, I edited the volume Medievalism in Finland and Russia: Twentieth- and Twenty-first-century Aspects (Bloomsbury Academic, 2022). I am part of the project SCISMA, studying the religious communities in Rome during the Great Western Schism (1378–1417).
Currently, I am interested in quantifying the often messy historical sources of polemics and persecution. In my Academy Fellowship project PERSECUTIO: Causalities of polemics and persecution in late medieval Europe 2023–2027), I study the relationship between hostile words and hostile deeds based on structured data. I am also an associate member of the DISSINET: Dissident Networks Project hosted at the Masaryk University Brno. Together with the DISSINET team, we currently explore quantitatively the rich prosopographical data of Stettin Waldensian inquisitions (1392–1394).
I am the responsible teacher of the module Digital history. I have previously taught introductory courses to digital humanities; both individual lectures and whole courses (Online course at the University of Turku in 2017, lectures and online course at the Åbo Akademi University in 2018 and 2020). In 2018, I co-ordinated a course on suffering in premodern cultural history. I also regularly teach Zotero workshops to both students and research staff.
- Analisi delle reti sociali delle communità valdesi germanofone nell'ultimo scorcio del XIV secolo (2024) Storia dei valdesi 1: Come nuovi apostoli (secc. XII-XV) Välimäki Reima, Zbíral David
- Book Review: Irene Bueno / Vincenzo Lavenia / Riccardo Parmeggiani (eds.): Current Trends in the Historiography of Inquisitions. Themes and Comparisons. 2023. ISBN 978-1-254-69487-0 (2024)
- Sehepunkte
- Book Review: Kennan, Claire; Wells, Emma J. (Hrsg.): What is Medieval?. Decoding Approaches to the Medieval and Medievalism in the 21st Century. Turnhout 2023 , ISBN 978-2-503-60068-0 (2024)
- H-Soz-Kult
- Pyhää kohti – Keskiaikainen pyhiinvaellusreitti Turussa (2024) Hella, Anni; Helkala, Elina; Hovi, Tuija; Opas, Minna
- Was it Augustine After All? Patristic Sources of Medieval Anti-heretical Polemics from the Perspective of Text Reuse Analysis (2024)
- I Quaderni del M.AE.S.
- Book review: Jørgen Møller and Jonathan Stavnskær Doucette. The Catholic Church and European State Formation, AD 1000–1500 Oxford. 2022. ISBN 978-0-19-285711-8 (2023)
- Mirator
- Book Review: Pastoral Care and Community in Late Medieval Germany: Albert of Diessen's Mirror of Priests by Deeana Copeland Klepper. 2022. ISBN: 978-1-501-76616-9 (2023)
- Catholic Historical Review
- Historiantutkija vihapuheen vuosisatojen virrassa (2023) Ratkaiseva humanisti. Kaksitoista innostavaa tarinaa työelämästä Välimäki Reima
- Minorities and Persecution (2023) Routledge Resources Online – Medieval Studies Välimäki Reima
- Keskiajan keski-ikäiset munkit ja veljet (2022) Keski-ikä: kulttuurihistoria Immonen Teemu, Välimäki Reima
- Kirja-arvio: Tutkivan journalistin otteella salaliittoteorioista. Kivioja, Pasi: Salaliittoteorioiden ihmemaassa. 2022. ISBN 978-9-52-382196-5 (2022)
- Agricolan kirja-arvostelut
- Kulttuurihistoria, valta ja toimijuus: kohti posthumanismin jälkeistä kulttuurihistoriaa (2022) Kulttuurihistorian tutkimus. Lähteistä menetelmiin ja tulkintaan Kaartinen Marjo, Välimäki Reima
- Medievalism in Finland and Russia: Twentieth- and Twenty-First Century Aspects (2022) Välimäki Reima
- Muistaminen, muisti ja tieto (2022)
- Mirator
- Preface: Medievalism in Finland and Russia and why it matters (2022) Medievalism in Finland and Russia: Twentieth- and Twenty-First-Century Aspects Välimäki Reima
- The Ancient Finnish Kings and their Swedish Archenemy: Nationalism, Conspiracy Theories, and Alt-Right Memes in Finnish Online Medievalism (2022) Studies in Medievalism XXXI Välimäki Reima, Aali Heta
- The materiality of Turku Cathedral's spiritual treasury: indulgence (2022)
- Material Religion
- The portrayal of the Waldensian Brethren in the De vita et conversacione (c. 1391-3) (2022) Inquisition and knowledge, 1200-1700 Välimäki Reima
- The Worst of All Heresies: Polemical Responses to Waldensianism ca. 1200–1400 (2022) Encountering Others, Understanding Ourselves in Medieval and Early Modern Thought Välimäki Reima
- Historian poliittinen käyttö (teemanumero, Historiallinen Aikakauskirja 4/2021) (2021) Välimäki Reima, Aali Heta, Oiva Mila