Conference Programme

BOMOCULT CONFERENCE 2026

Unpacking Ideologies, Challenging Divisions

1-2 October 2026

University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu campus

Conference venue Agora Building, Yliopistokatu 4, 80100 Joensuu

Exhibition venue Carelia Building, Lobby, Yliopistokatu 4, 80100 Joensuu

Thursday 1 October 2026

8.30-9.00 Conference Registration (Agora Lobby)

9.00-9.30 Opening of exhibition “Kuvia rajan takaa” (Pictures from behind the border) (Lobby, Carelia Building). Authors: Anna Yarovaja and Kerttu Matinpuro.

9.30-10.30 Conference Opening (AT100)

Keynote 1: Victor Konrad (Carleton University, Canada): Border Heritage: Ideological Legacies of Division Encounter an Emerging World of Mobility and Diversity (Room AT100)

10.30-12.00 Panel Session 1

Panel 1a: Digital and Technological Borders (Room AT100)

Outi Hakola (UEF): Synthetic Communication and Populism: Use of Deepfakes in the Trump Administration

Ville-Samuli Haverinen (UEF): The Digital Gaze of Integration: Unpacking the Ideology of Neutral Bordering in Finland and the EU

Maija Hämäläinen-Abdessamad (UEF): Discourses of Finnishness and Finland in Popular Russian YouTube Travel Vlogs (2015–2022, prior to 24 February 2022)

Panel 1b: Mobilities (Room AG109)

Anna-Leena Toivanen (UEF): Rethinking Postcolonial Mobilities through Literature

Chengyu Yang (University of Bristol): Sound as Borderwork: Infrastructural Sound and Listening Politics on Taiwan’s Archipelagic Borderland Kinmen

Justyna Kiełkowicz (Jagellonian University, Poland): Gender and Mobilities in Chinelo Okparanta’s Under the Udala Trees

12.00-12.45 Lunch Break

12.45-14.45 Panel Session 2

Panel 2a: Affect, Encounter, Experience (N.B. Room AG101 12.45-14.15; Room AG100 14.15-14.45)

Tuomas Järvenpää (UEF): Border Crossing with Christian Dance in Finland

Dirim Dinçer (Delft University of Technology/Independent Research Collective Lokaal, Netherlands): Straightened Imaginations, Affective Encounters: Terraqueous Borders Across Antep and Izmi

Jenni Mölkänen (UEF): Concepts and Practices of Religious Encounters in Culturally Diverse Madagascar

2b: Memory (Room AG102)

Alexander Osipov (UEF): From Silence to Suffering: Remembering the Finnish Occupation in Russian Karelia

Anitta Anna Moncy (University of Bonn, Germany): Multidirectional Memory and Asymmetrical Memorialization: An Analysis of the Memorial Landscape of Berlin

Rūta Vyšniauskaitė (Vilnius University, Lithuania): Borderland Narratives. Negotiating Memory and Political Identity in the Vilnius Region Museums

Virpi Salojärvi (UEF) and Minos-Athanasios Karyotakis (Hong Kong Baptist University): Colonialism, Memory, and Territorial Disputes: The News Discourse of the Territorial Conflict over Essequibo between Guyana and Venezuela

14.45-15.00 Coffee

15.00-17.00 Panel Session 3

Panel 3a: Environment and the Posthuman (Room AG100)

Aija Lulle (UEF): Beavers and Bears at the Latvian–Belarusian Border: Nature, Mobility, and Placemaking

Anna-Sofia Sysser (UEF): Northern Tropicality – Encounters in Materiality, Knowledge and Imaginaries

Kai-Yang Huang (National Taiwan University): Blue Tears as Affective Geonarratives: Reconfiguring Matsu and Beyond

Pekka Kilpeläinen (UEF): Posthuman Contact Zones in Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing

Panel 3b: Spaces of Encounters and Migration (Room AG102)

Falguny Islam (UEF): South Asian Interfaith Marriage as a Transgressive Space: Everyday Negotiations of Difference

Saara Koikkalainen (UEF): From Protection to Precarity? Employment Trajectories of Ukrainians under Temporary Protection in Finland

Yu-Hsiu Lien (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA): Who Makes Post-colonial East Asian Maritime Borders?

Minna Piipponen (UEF): International Migration and Policy Responses of Kazakhstan in Central Asia: Expectations of Efficiency through Digitalization

17.00-19.00 Panel 4 and Roundtable 1

Panel 4: Migration, Discourse, Politics (AG106)

Helena Rovamo (UEF): ”They Don’t Seem That Interested in Us”: Young Immigrants’ Construction of Discursive Barriers to Intergroup Contact with the Majority Population

Larisa Leisiö (UEF) and Elena Bratishenko (University of Calgary, Canada): Russian Prepositions in Competition and Political Sovereignty of Ukraine

Zahra Hosseini (University of Helsinki): Citizenship in Democratic Societies: Trust, Inclusion, Belonging

Esa Penttilä, Elina Kainulainen, Helka Riionheimo, Juho Suokas and Erja Vottonen (UEF): English Hegemony as a Monitor of Meaning Construction in Academic Discourse

Roundtable 1: Disinformation Frontlines: Foreign Manipulation, Domestic Amplification, and the Politics of Resilience (Room AG100)

Organizers Po-Yi Hung (National Taiwan University) and Jussi P. Laine (UEF)

Chair: Po-Yi Hung (National Taiwan University)

Discussant: Jussi P. Laine (UEF)

Panellists: Hsiu-Hua Shen (National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan), Shu-Mei Huang (National Taiwan University), Ming-Feng Liu (National Quemoy University, Taiwan), Jamie Ferrill (Charles Sturt University, Australia), Alexander Diener (UEF)

19:00 Networking Event (Agora Lobby)

Friday 2 October 2026

9.00-10.30 Panel 5 and Special Session

Panel 5: International Securitization (Room AG101)

BMK Haider (UEF) and Jussi P. Laine (UEF): Securitizing the Stateless: The Impact of Neighbouring Countries on Bangladesh’s Rohingya Response

Mohammed Ryed Chellali (University of Oran 2 Mohamed Ben Ahmed, Algeria): When Borders Become Political Narratives: Migration, Fundamental Rights, and the Legal Construction of Belonging in Europe

Mei-Huan Chen (National Taiwan University): Governing the Fluid Land-sea Border: Smooth Cordgrass and Ecological Containment on the Kinmen Islands

Special Session: Linguistic Diversity or a Zero-Sum Game? (organizer Alicja Fajfer, UEF) (Room AG109)

Participants:

Alicja Fajfer (facilitator)

Anna Björno (Laurea University of Applied Sciences)

Ilja Moshnikov (UEF)

Johanna Ennser-Kananen (University of Jyväskylä)

Juho Suokas (UEF)

10.30-10.45 Coffee

10.45-11.45 Keynote 2: Kathryn Cassidy (Northumbria University): Alter-Geopolitical Encounters: Creative Practice, Everyday Abolition, and the Possibilities of Unbordering (Room AG100)

11.45-12.30 Lunch Break

12.30-14.30 Panel 6 and Roundtable 2

Panel 6: Conflict and Trauma (Room AG101)

Ari Räisänen (UEF): Remembering the Cambodian Genocide through Mobilities in Vaddey Ratner’s In the Shadow of the Banyan and Music of the Ghosts

Hanaa Hamdan (UEF): Trauma, Identity, Belonging, and Displacement in Zoulfa Katoush’s As Long as the Lemon Trees Grow

Lin Liang Yin (National Taiwan University): Preparing the Frontline: Uneven Bordering along the First Island Chain

Ming-Feng Liu (National Quem University, Taiwan): Imperial Legacies and Narrative Markets: Comparing Russo-Ukrainian War Narratives in Taiwan and Finland

Roundtable 2: What Can Minoritized Communities’ Strategies Tell Us about Civil Society in Contemporary Russia? (Room AG100). Organizers Pauliina Lukinmaa (UEF), Daria Kuznetsova (UEF), and Kaarina Aitamurto (University of Helsinki).

Participants:

Kaarina Aitamurto (University of Helsinki): Governing Islam after February 2022: Tightening Control and Deepening Divisions

Daria Kuznetsova (UEF): Selective Visibility: Shamanism, Political Loyalty and Indigenous Authority in Wartime Russia

Pauliina Lukinmaa (UEF): Activist Approaches to Preserving LGBTIQ+ Activism in Contemporary Russia

Daniil Zhaivoronok (Tampere University): Resistance and Cooptation: Feminism in Russia after 2022

14.30-14.45 Break

14.45-16.15 Panel 7 and Roundtable 3

Panel 7: Urban and Rural Spaces (Room AG101)

Ebenezer Nikoi (University of Ghana): Migration, Gender and the Uneven Geography of Agrarian Service Access in Northern Ghana

James W. Scott (UEF): Social Infrastructures, Place Identity and Community: De-coding Urban-Rural Divides

Omotomilola Ikotun (UEF): When Mobility Meets Territory: Legal Pluralism, Cultural Boundaries and Community-Led Peace in Nigeria

Roundtable 3: How to Immigrate into History? Migration, War Memory and Belonging in Times of Geopolitical Polarization (Room AG100). Organizer Olga Davydova-Minguet (UEF).

Moderator: Olga Davydova-Minguet (UEF)

Partipants:

Anssi Neuvonen (UEF): Immigration into History? Rethinking the Migration-Integration-Memory Politics Nexus in a Changing Geopolitical Context

Tetiana Nahirniak (UEF): Encountering Finnish War Memory: Ukrainian and Russian Visitors at Muisti and Suomussalmi Memory Sites

Olga Filippova (UEF): Ukrainian and Russian-Speaking Migrants as Publics of War Memory Sites in Finland and Germany: Negotiating Interaction, Researcher Positionalities, and Reflexivity in Times of War

Olga Davydova-Minguet (UEF) and Daria Agapova (UEF): War Memory in Migration Contexts: Fieldwork Reflections from Finland and Germany

16.15-16.30 Closing words (Room AG100)