Alumni of the Month: Matti Kangaskoski and Ulrika Maude

I am both a scholar and a poet. My latest novel, Cosmos and Death (Teos), was published in 2024. Currently I work as a postdoctoral researcher in literature and writing at the Department of Music, Art, and Cultural Studies in the University of Jyväskylä.

My main research project The Logic of the Feed. Literature in the Age of Reels and Prompts concerns the influence of social media interfaces and recent AI applications on literature. I am part of the Finnish Research Council consortium project Authors of the Story Economy: Narrative and Digital Capital in the 21st-Century Literary Field and the Modes and Media in Narrative Studies based in the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. As for writing, I am working on a popular book on the influence of digital media on war. My next novel explores biological and technological memory from the perspective of the future.

At the Collegium, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Arts (2019–2020). I cannot sufficiently express the joy and warmth I experienced. My time at the Collegium was invigorating in terms of academic thought and friendships as well as artistically. I truly appreciated the opportunity to bounce ideas both formally and informally with scholars from various disciplines and backgrounds. People with parallel careers in art and academy have few opportunities to truly unite the two ambitions in an institutional setting, and for me, the Collegium was this kind of a rare treat.

I am Professor of Modern Literature and Director of the Centre for Health, Humanities and Science at the University of Bristol. I have published on modernist literature, perception, medicine, and philosophies of embodiment, including a monograph on  (2009), and the co-edited volumes  (2009),  (2009) and  (2015).

The Fellowship at HCAS provided me with a convivial, intellectually lively, and productive research environment. During my fellowship, I wrote articles and book chapters, worked on editing (2018), and wrote several draft chapters of (2025), which was contracted during my HCAS residence. I also delivered talks at the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute (NYPSI); Mount Sinai Hospital in New York; the University of Pennsylvania Slought Foundation; the Modernist Studies Association conference in Boston; the University of Antwerp, and more. With Josephine Hoegaerts (Amsterdam) and Leszek Kostanowitz (Wroclaw), I organised an HCAS conference on ‘Embodiment and Emancipation’, which was held in April 2017. My Fellowship at HCAS constituted a uniquely productive, happy, and career-transforming year upon which I reflect with great fondness.