Meeria Vesala

Meeria Vesala is a Ph.D. Candidate in English Literature at Åbo Akademi University in Finland. She researches the relationship between literature, place, and identity. Her work explores literary geography and archaeology, and her dissertation (forthcoming, 2028) analyzes the role of archaeology in contemporary fiction. Vesala is interested in questions that deal with philosophy, identity, people's history, American and Canadian literature, art, and literary criticism.

Vesala is the Board Member and Bibliography Editor of the Association for Literary Urban Studies (ALUS). She is also a member of the Modern Language Association (MLA), European Society for the Study of English (ESSE), and Fringe Urban Network. 

In addition to grading MA theses and essays in English Literature, Vesala has taught the following, semester-long courses: 

Introduction to Literary Analysis / Tampere University, 2022-2023. 
Phonetics / Åbo Akademi University, 2023-2024 and 2024-2025. 

Vesala's Chapter 'Hope as Action in Albert Camus's The Plague' has just been published by Palgrave Macmillan in the volume titled Urban Discources of Crisis, Resilience, and Resistance: Cities Under Stress (July 2025). Chapter 6, pages 90-108. Available as a hard copy by Springer Nature and as a pdf-copy from the author. 

Meeria Vesala works as Education Policy Specialist at JHL advancing and improving the quality of higher education in Finland. JHL is Finland's largest Trade Union of the Welfare Sector and has over 150,000 registered members.  

Professional Mobility: 
New York City, New York, USA 2018-2021
Toronto, CAN & NYC, USA 2017
Emporia, Kansas, USA 2013
Oakville, Ontario, CAN 2008-2009
Windsor, Berkshire, UK 2006
Hamilton, Ontario, CAN 2004-2005