Studies framing “belonging” as a key focus and a central concept of research have increased significantly in the 2000s. This article explores the dimensions of belonging as a scholarly concept. The investigation is based on a qualitative content analysis of articles published in academic journals covering a large number of different disciplines. The article poses and answers the following research questions: How is belonging understood and used in contemporary research? What added value does the concept bring to scholarly discussions? In the analysis, five topoi of conceptualizing belonging – spatiality, intersectionality, multiplicity, materiality, and non-belonging – were identified. After introducing the topoi, the article explores their cross-cutting dimensions, such as the emphasis on the political, emotional, and affective dimensions of belonging, and discusses key observations made from the data, such as the substantial proportion of research on minorities and “vulnerable” people. The analysis of the data suggests that by choosing to use the concept of belonging, scholars seek to emphasize the fluid, unfixed, and processual nature of diverse social and spatial attachments.

The diversification of the media has opened up new spaces for performances that seek not only to evoke laughter but also to voice social critique. One example of this development is the TV comedy show Märät säpikkäät/Njuoska bittut, created by two young women belonging to the indigenous Sámi people living in Finland, in Northern Europe. This paper focuses on one particularly critical sketch in the show: a counter parody of a popular parody of the Sámi presented by two Finnish male comedians. The original sketch was a parody of ethnicity. As they strike back, however, the female presenters consciously foreground the categories of gender and class, thereby introducing a completely new figure: a white, urban, underclass woman. In this paper we draw on intersectionality and indexicality to analyse this multidimensional performance and its intertextual links to the original sketch. We ask, what do these insurgent discursive practices mean in terms of critique, what do they do under cover of laughter?

This article discusses a form of lifestyle blogging where women blog about their homes and everyday lives. In these homing blogs, selfrepresentations are characteristically spatially demarcated within the private sphere of the home. As these repeated representations of women in their homes take place in the public space of the internet, homing blogs work towards naturalizing the home as a women's sphere. Written and commented on mostly by other women, homing blogs represent a feminine form of self-expression and communication that functions as a discursive expression of ongoing social, economic, and cultural changes in affluent Western societies. In this article, Finnish versions of these homing blogs are analysed in the cultural and political context of contemporary Finland, and discussed as a form of intimate publics that reverses the gender politics of other historical, semi-public spaces for the exercise of women's agency, such as the salon.

A growing number of applied linguists and language educators in the US/North American context advocate for and from a scholarly perspective which views language issues in relation to racial issues and vice versa. The emergent field of raciolinguistics highlights the relationships between language and race/racism and has brought about research that investigates their intersections. Should scholars in Finland adopt (and adapt) such an approach to scholarly work? Three Finland-based scholars explore this question in a question ("prompt") - response format.

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Finnish psychiatric practice has been heavily based on institutionalization. Mental hospitals have thus been part of Finns’ lives in many ways. Our multidisciplinary research group has investigated how experiences in these institutions are remembered today by analysing writings by patients, relatives, personnel and their children, collected in 2014–2015 with the Finnish Literature Society. The memories cover phases of psychiatric care from the 1930s to the mid-2010s. This article presents multiple ways in which experiences that are often difficult verbalize can be interpreted, e.g. by drawing on perspectives from creative, artistic and cultural studies. Collecting and archiving the memories emphasizes their importance as part of national memory. Historical contextualization shows consistencies and inconsistencies in the treatment and organization of psychiatric care in Finland. The analysis of figurative language as a means of conveying traumatic experiences reveals narrative strategies employed to express abusive memories. Artistic research that includes somatic movement practice exemplifies possibilities of researching the memories through corporeality. The examination of the memories of the children of the staff in psychiatric hospitals provides new insights into historical psychiatric hospitals as emotional communities. The different ways of engaging—thematically, corporeally, conceptually, theoretically—with the texts complement each other, reveal the multilayeredness of the memories and help create a richer understanding of the social, cultural and economic significance of the hospitals. Attention to the body, affects and emotions can help generate both new practices, new research questions and new ways of engaging the public with the results of academic research.