Jussi Kurunmäki

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Jussi Kurunmäki

 

Jussi Kurunmäki, Associate Professor (docent) in political science, works in the fields of political ideas, conceptual history and political rhetoric. He is currently a research fellow at the Institute for Contemporary History at Södertörn University, Stockholm. Kurunmäki has previously been a fellow at the Department of Political Science, Stockholm University, and at the Centre for Nordic Studies (CENS), University of Helsinki. Kurunmäki has an extensive experience in scientific activities in Sweden and Finland, as well as in Nordic and European research networks.

He has examined the history of democracy in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Europe and, in particular, in the Nordic countries. He has paid special attention to the rhetorical relationship between democracy and nationalism, as well as the interwar crisis of democracy. His aim has been to historicize the concept of democracy and thereby bring in an actor perspective to the study of democracy. This conceptual history premise is applied, for example, in his works Rhetorics of Nordic Democracy (2010); ‘The Lost Language of Democracy: Anti-rhetorical traits in research on democratisation and the interwar crisis of democracy’ (2012); ‘Rhetoric against Rhetoric: Swedish Parliamentarism and the Interwar Crisis of Democracy’ (2014); ‘How Women’s Suffrage Was Devalued: The Burden of Analytical Categories and the Conceptual History of Democracy’ (forthcoming 2015).

Kurunmäki has also developed rhetorical view on political ideologies, in which ‘isms’ are understood as rhetorically potent concepts that contain a mixture of universalistic claims and particularistic applications. He has written on the history of liberalism in Finland: ‘On the Difficulty of Being National Liberal in Nineteenth-Century Finland’ (2013); and in Sweden: ‘Nordic Liberalisms: Sweden and Denmark in Comparison’ (forthcoming 2015, with Jeppe Nevers); as well as on the history of the concept of parliamentarism in Sweden and Finland: ‘Rhetoric against Rhetoric: Swedish Parliamentarism and the Interwar Crisis of Democracy’ (2014); ’The Formation of Parliamentarism in the Nordic Countries from the Napoleonic Wars to the First World War’ (forthcoming 2015, with Uffe Jakobsen).

Kurunmäki is an active member of the international scholarly community that has been formed around the methods and practices of conceptual history. He has convened several international conferences and workshops, and he has been actively involved in the publishing project European Conceptual History, both as a member of the planning group and as an author and editor. Kurunmäki is chair of the international network Concepta – International Research Seminars in Conceptual History and Political Thought.

E-mail: jussi.kurunmaki (at) sh.se

Web: http://www.concepta-net.org/jussi_kurunmaki