Samira Saramo

Introduction

At the Migration Institute of Finland, I am responsible for research on expatriate Finns and emigration, as well as archival development.

I am a transdisciplinary historian of migration, place, community, emotions, everyday life, and settler colonialism. I examine transnational identities, encounters, and narratives. Most often, my research focuses on the history of Finns in North America and Soviet Karelia. In my research, I utilize archival sources as well as ethnography, visual methods, soundscapes, and mapping.

www.samirasaramo.com 

Projects

Deep Mapping the “Uncharted Territories” of Finnish Immigrant History (Koneen Säätiö, 2020–2025)

Migrant Experiences, Past and Present: A New Finland-U.S. Research & Archival Partnership (Embassy of the USA in Finland, 2023–2025)

Death and Mourning in “Finnish North America” (Suomen akatemia, 2017–2020)

Essential publications

Saramo, Samira (2024). “Vahinko! Finnish Canadian Socialists Making Sense of Accidental Fire” in The Accidental History of Canada, eds. Megan Davies & Geoffrey Hudson, 33–60. McGill-Queens University Press.

Samira Saramo & Ulla Savolainen (2023). “Moving Memories of Soviet Repression and Displacement” in The Legacies of Stalin-Era Repression: The Multiple and Mobile Lives of Memories,” eds. Samira Saramo & Ulla Savolainen, 1–18. London: Routledge. DOI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003305569-1

Saramo, Samira (2022). Building that Bright Future: Soviet Karelia in the Life Writing of Finnish North Americans. University of Toronto Press.

Saramo, Samira (2022). “Life Writing as a Settler Colonial Tool: Finnish Migrant-Settlers Claiming Place and Belonging” in Finnish Settler Colonialism in North America: Rethinking Finnish Experiences in Transimperial Spaces, eds. Rani-Henrik Andersson & Janne Lahti, 211–233. Helsinki: University of Helsinki Press. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33134/AHEAD-2-9

Saramo, Samira (2022). “Capitalism as Death: Loss of Life and the Finnish Migrant Left in the Early Twentieth Century.” Journal of Social History, 55, 3 (Spring): 668–694. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/jsh/shab039

Saramo, Samira (2021). “Archives of Place, Feeling, and Time: Immersive Historical Field Research in the (Finnish) U.S. Midwest.” Qualitative Research, 23,2: 399-416. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/14687941211033086

Samira Saramo and Marta-Laura Cenedese, co-editors (2020). Connective Histories of Death, Special Issue of Thanatos, 2. https://journal.fi/thanatos/issue/view/10518

Saramo, Samira (2019). “Making Transnational Death Familiar.” Samira Saramo, Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto, and Hanna Snellman (eds.), Transnational Death. Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 1–16.

Saramo, Samira (2018). “‘I have such sad news’: Loss in Finnish North American Letters.” European Journal of Life Writing, 7 (2018), 53–71.

Saramo, Samira (2018). “Terveisiä: A Century of Finnish Immigrant Letters.” Michel Beaulieu, Ronald Harpelle, and David Ratz (eds.), Hard Work Conquers All: Finnish Canadian Experiences. Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 165–184.

Saramo, Samira (2017). “Lakes, Rock, Forest:  Placing Finnish Immigrant History.” Journal of Finnish Studies 20, 2 (November), 55–76.

Saramo, Samira (2017). “The Meta-Violence of Trumpism.” European Journal of American Studies, 12, 2, 1–17.

Saramo, Samira (2016). “Unsettling Spaces: Grassroots Responses to Canada’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women during the Harper Government Years.” Benita Heiskanen and Samira Saramo (eds.), Disrupting Insecurity: Grassroots Interventions, Special Issue of Comparative American Studies 14, 3/4 (December), 204–220.