On 20 October 2025, 1st and 2nd-year MAREEES students, together with a group of PhD students from the Mannerheim Professorship Working Group, visited the Muisti Centre of War and Peace in Mikkeli. The trip was organised by the Mannerheim Professorship Working Group led by Professor Katri Pynnöniemi and aimed to explore the historical and contemporary discussions on war, including the Winter War, the Continuation War, and the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
The Muisti Centre of War and Peace is a modern, interactive museum that examines the human experience of war – during the visit, students explored exhibitions covering Finland’s wartime history, including the impact of the Winter War and the losses endured by both military personnel and civilians, and experienced the war through virtual reality glasses, providing an immersive and immediate understanding of the wartime conditions. Students also visited the Headquarters Museum, which displays Marshal Mannerheim’s study room and the Operational Department’s Land Forces Office in their original wartime layouts.
After the exhibition, students participated in a workshop and discussion centred on a chapter from How Finland Survived Stalin: From Winter War to Cold War (1939–1950) by Kimmo Rentola, where the group discussed Finland’s military history and decision-making processes during the Second World War. The workshop included a presentation of the ongoing research within the Mannerheim Professorship Working Group and the challenges of examining war and security topics in contemporary contexts.
Students noted that while the exhibitions were rich in personal experiences and military history, they touched only briefly on the internal political elite dynamics within Finland’s elite during the war – this opens a broader view on the ways museums shape national memory: which aspects of history are highlighted, which are simplified, and which remain in the background.