Susanna Paasonen
Professor of Media Studies
suspaa@utu.fi +358 29 450 3429 +358 50 328 9613 Arcanuminkuja 1 Turku |
internet research, critical sexuality studies, affect inquiry, media theory, popular culture
I'm professor of Media Studies and head of department. After finishing my PhD in 2002 I worked at universities of Tampere, Helsinki and Jyväskylä before starting in my current post in 2011. I've been visiting scholar/profesor at MIT and Microsoft Research New England's Social Media Collective (2016), University of Florence (2020) and University of Sydney (2022).
I'm broadly interested in media culture and my recent book projects range from social media inquiry to cinema history in e.g., Who's Laughing Now? Feminist Tactics in Social Media (with Jenny Sundén, MIT Press 2020), Objectification: On the Difference Between Sex and Sexism (with Feona Attwood, Alan McKee, John Mercer and Clarissa Smith, Routledge 2020), Distracted, Frustrated, Bored: Affective Formations in Networked Media (MITP 2021), Technopharmacology (with Joshua Neves, Aleena Chia and Ravi Sundaram, University of Minnesota Press 2022) and Yul Brynner: Exoticism, Cosmopolitanism and Screen Masculinity (Edinburgh University Press, 2023). Hot Connections: Why Sexual Platforms Matter, co-authored with Sundén and Katrin Tiidenberg, is forthcoming from MITP in 2026.
I serve on the editorial boards member of the journals New Media & Society, Social Media + Society, Sexualities, Porn Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, Dialogues on Digital Society, Postmodern Culture, Capacious, Postmodern Culture, Journal of Scandinavian Cinema, Kvinder, kön och forskning, MedieKultur and Monstrum.
I have taught courses on media studies, cultural studies, digital culture and gender studies since 1998. I'm in charge of Media Studies' postgraduate studies, participate in MA supervision, and teach also at BA level.
- Fickle focus: Distraction, affect and the production of value in social media (2016)
- First MondayInternational Journal of Cultural Studies
- Glimmers of the forbidden fruit – Reminiscing pornography, conceptualizing the archive (2016)
- Pornification and the Mainstreaming of Sex (2016) Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Criminology Paasonen Susanna
- Visceral pedagogies: Pornography, affect, and safety in the university classroomAs Networks Fail – Affect, Technology, and the Notion of the User (2016)
- Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural StudiesTelevision and New Media
- A midsummer’s bonfire – Affective intensities of online debateFleshy Intensities (2015) Networked Affect Paasonen Susanna
- (2015)
- (2015) Writing and Unwriting (Media) Art History: Erkki Kurenniemi in 2048 Paasonen Susanna
- Heavy skies and a cold Soviet feelOnline Pornography (2015)
- Journal of Scandinavian Cinema
- (2015) Networked Affect Paasonen Susanna, Hillis Ken, Petit Michael
- Pornosta (2015) Huumorin skaalat: Esitys, tyyli, tarkoitus Paasonen Susanna
- Networked Affect”Siinä oli hämähäkki väärinpäin” – Tutkimusraportti pornografiaa koskevan muistitiedon keruuhankkeesta (2015) Hillis Ken, Paasonen Susanna, Petit Michael
- We hid porn magazines in the nearby woods – Memory-work and pornography consumption in Finland (2015) International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition Paasonen Susanna
- ‘Pervy role-play and such’ – Girls' experiences of sexual messaging onlineAffects et pornographies numériques – Entretien avec Susanna Paasonen (2015)
- Sex Education
- Between Meaning and Mattering – On Affect and Porn Studies (2015) Paasonen Susanna
- Diagnoses of Transformation – Pornification, digital media, and the diversification of the pornographic (2015) Paasonen Susanna, Kyrölä Katariina, Nikunen Kaarina, Saarenmaa Laura, Välimäki Teo
- (2015)
- SexualitiesMedia ja Viestintä
- (2014) Sexe en public Floros Florian, Paasonen Susanna
- (2014)
- Porn Studies
- (2014) The Philosophy of Pornography: Contemporary Perspectives Paasonen Susanna
- 2014