Mikko Joronen

I am an Associate Professor of Regional Studies engaging with a wide range of research topics in the field of political geography. After earning my doctoral degree in human geography (2011) and working as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Turku (Department of Geography), I joined the Space and Political Agency Research Group (SPARG) at Tampere University in 2014. I worked first as postdoctoral researcher at the RELATE Center of Excellence (Research Council of Finland, 2014-2019), after which my research has been funded by the Academy Research Fellowship (Research Council of Finland, 2017-2022), Tampere Institute for Advanced Study Senior Fellowship (IAS, 2022-2024), and the ERC Consolidator Grant (European Research Council, 2023-2028). Over the years I have been the principal investigator of several research projects, including the Academy of Finland-funded 'Present-futures in/of Palestine' (2019-2023) and the ERC-funded 'Dwelling with crisis: home at spaces of chronic Violence' (2023-2028). I earned the Title of Docent in Political Geography in 2017 and have been visiting research fellow at Durham University, Aberystwyth University, Northumbria University and University of Kentucky. Currently, I lead the Geographies of Coloniality and Everyday Violence Research Group (GOCEP) at Tampere University, as well as the Palestine Research Group, a collaborative network between Tampere and Newcastle Universities. 

In my research, I focus broadly on questions of everyday violence, ungovernability, coloniality, materiality and power/governing in Palestine and the Middle East, while I have also had a long-term interest on geographical theory and methodology. Over the years, my research has elaborated these topics through three broader thematic frames: the spatial politics of vulnerability, the tempos and temporalities of everyday violence, and the intersection of ontology, politics and space. My publications explore themes like slow violence, waiting, and the politics of speed; the politics of future and the geographies of contemporary colonialism; ontological politics and its spatialisation; and the relationship of various forms of power, violence and coloniality to questions of everyday agency, vulnerability and ungovernability. Currently, I am focusing on embodied materialities of atmospheric violence, especially in relation to weaponisations of breathing, olfaction, weather, and infrastructure, and the affective politics of home in the Middle East, occupied Palestinian Territories in particular. 

Political Geography, Human Geography, Critical Geography, Geographical Theory and Methodology, Middle East, Palestine/Israel, Everyday Violence, War&Conflicts, Colonial History and Present

(For a broad list of publications, see below)

Joronen M & Ghantous W (2024) Weathering violence: atmospheric materialities and olfactory durations of ‘skunk water’ in Palestine. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241226923

Joronen M (2023) Atmospheric negations: Weaponising breathing, attuning irreducible bodies. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 41(5): 765-783

Griffiths M & Joronen M (2023). Encountering Palestine: Un/making Spaces of Colonial Violence. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. 

Joronen M & Griffiths M (2022). Ungovernability and ungovernable life in Palestine. Political Geography 98.

Ghantous W & Joronen M (2022). Dromoelimination: accelerating settler colonialism in Palestine. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 40(3): 393-412

Joronen M & Rose M (2021). Vulnerability and its politics: Precarity and the woundedness of power. Progress in Human Geography, 45(6): 1402-1418

Joronen M (2021). Unspectacular spaces of slow wounding in Palestine. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 46(4):995-1007.

Joronen M, Tawil-Souri H, Amir M & Griffiths M (2021) Palestinian Futures: Anticipation, Imagination, Embodiments. Introduction to Special Issue. Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography, 103(4): 277-282

Griffiths M & Joronen M (2021) Governmentalizing futures: uncertainty, possibility and anticipation in occupied Palestine. Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography, 103(4): 352-366

Joronen M (2019). Negotiating colonial violence: spaces of precarisation in Palestine. Antipode 51(3), 838-857.

Joronen M & Griffiths M (2019). The affective politics of precarity: home demolitions in occupied West Bank. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 37(3), 561–576.

Joronen M (2017) Spaces of waiting: politics of precarious recognition in the occupied West Bank. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 35(6):994–1011.

Joronen M & Häkli J (2017) Politizicing Ontology. Progress in Human Geography 41(5): 561–579.

Joronen M (2017) Refusing to be a victim, refusing to be an enemy. Form-of-life as resistance in Palestinian struggle against settler colonialism. Political Geography, 56, 91–100

Joronen M (2016) Death comes knocking on the roof. Governmentalities of ethical killing during Operation Protective Edge in Gaza. Antipode 48(2), 336-354.

 Joronen M (2016) Politics of being-related. On onto-topologies and coming events. Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography 98(2), 97-107.

 Joronen M (2013) Heidegger, Event and the Ontological Politics of the Site. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 38(4), 627-638.