Marika Kivinen

I am a Ph D candidate in history. My dissertation has the working title ”Tracing Colonialism in Music: Orientalism and Exoticism in Finnish Art Songs 1900–1939”. In my work I combine archival research, cultural music analysis with artistic work as a classical singer.

I am particularly interested in how different forms of exoticism and exoticising in Finnish music in the early 1900s are connected to global colonial discourses. I study especially how German orientalism and French exoticism in music and literature have influenced Finnish music, and how Finnish composers have reused and moulded colonial themes.

I am also studying racializing and anti-Black racism in Finnish historical contexts. In my PhD I study the collaboration between African-American contralto Marian Anderson and Finnish pianist Kosti Vehanen in the 1930s, in order to highlight resistance to racism through artistic work. I am also studying how racializing takes place through music culture (performance practice, music reviews, choice of repertoire).

To date, I have created three concerts, that discuss and present these issues through song. Waterways 2020, Tribute to Marian Anderson and Kosti Vehanen 2021 and In the footsteps of Marian Anderson and Kosti Vehanen 2022. 

My work is primarily funded by the project Untold Stories – a project combining music and creative writing with archival research and historical scholarship to tell forgotten stories of the relationship between Finland and colonialism (Kone Foundation: Kivinen PI). I have also received grants from the Swedish Cultural Foundation of Finland, Stiftelsen Till Hedvigs Minne, Makarna Olins Stiftelse and TOP-säätiö.

I am also actively working and publishing in feminist pedagogy. I am especially focusing on how embodied practices can be combined with intersectional and anti-racist pedagogy.

I have previously studied gender and race in Finnish travel literature in the 1930s and 1940s and in feminist magazines in the early 2000s. I have especially focused on constructions of whiteness. 

I am a member of the research association Suoni ry and am a columnist for the newspaper Åbo Underrättelser.

I am also a freelance singer and am a part-time teacher in classical singing at the Arts Academy of Turku University for Applied Sciences.