Den 1. februar 2025 byder vi velkommen til gæsteforsker Marika Ahonen fra University of Turku. Marika skal være hos os i et år hvor hun vil arbejde på sit projekt Siren: The Ethical Memory of a Myth.

Dr Marika Ahonen is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Aarhus (2025-2026). Her project "Siren: The Ethical Memory of a Myth" will explore the significance of the Siren myth in history and its ethical meaning in terms of cultural memory and social change. Ahonen's aim is to trace the Siren myth from ancient Greece to the present day, and to analyse the ethical memory of the myth. She will draw on Aleida Assmann's thoughts on how artworks have the potential to recall, critique and highlight possibilities in relation to memory and the culture of memory. By investigating the Siren myth in various artworks and cultural narratives, Ahonen examines its different interpretations from an ethical perspective, while developing a methodological-theoretical interpretive framework for the ethical reading of myths. In the first phase of her work, she will focus on the early history of the Siren figure through the study of antiquity.

Ahonen has previously analysed sirens in her article "Sirens, Narrative Ethics, and Christina Rosenvinge's 'Mi vida bajo el agua'", which won the International Essay Prize of the International Society for Cultural History: https://www.euppublishing.com/doi/10.3366/cult.2023.0280 In her article, she examines the historical representation of the siren myth and how it is employed by Spanish musician Christina Rosenvinge in her song "Mi vida bajo el agua" (2011) ("My life under water") and its music video.

Ahonen’s doctoral dissertation "The Storyteller of the Possible: Music and Narrative Ethics of Singer-Songwriter Christina Rosenvinge" examines the construction of narratives in popular music and the ethical questions raised in this context. Ahonen was interested in how narratives in popular music gain meaning from an ethical perspective and what role the artist plays in this process in the context of a particular time and place. Combining approaches from cultural history, hermeneutic narrative ethics and feminist studies, she explored issues related to the intersection of memory and power.

Ahonen has focused on the study of cultural narratives and memory, developing expertise in a wide range of materials and methods from cultural history, ethics, art and gender. Ahonen has specialised in memoirs and other biographical sources of women musicians, and more generally in the materials and methods of cultural history. She has co-edited anthologies on these topics, including the recent Women in Rock Memoirs: Music, History and Life-Writing (Oxford University Press 2023).

Read more about Ahonen and her research here: https://www.utu.fi/en/people/marika-ahonen