Lieven Ameel

PhD, docent (Finnish literature; urban studies and planning methods)

Comparative literature, narratology, genre theory, spatial humanities, literary urban studies

In my research, I work on urban futures across textual genres, uncertain ontologies in 21st c literature, narrated experiences of space, rhetorical structures in urban planning, place names in literature, representations of shorelines, and parkour, among others. I work on American literature of the long 20th century, Finnish and Nordic literature, as well as the literature of the Low Countries (Netherlands & Belgium). Much of my work involves cross-reading different textual genres, from the Bildungsroman to urban planning documents, from the graphic novel or epic poetry to policy visions.

My articles are published, among others, in Modernism/modernity; Poetics Today; Studies in the Novel; Narrative; Style; Green Letters; Planning Perspectives; Critique: Studies in Contemporary Fiction; Textual Practice; Scandinavian Studies; Journal of Urban Cultural Studies; Geografiska Annaler B; Social & Cultural Geography; Journal of Dutch Linguistics and Literature; Spiegel der Letteren; Yhdyskuntasuunnittelu; Terra; Avain; Fennia; Alue & ympäristö.

Ameel, Lieven (toim.). Routledge Companion to Literary Urban Studies. London: Routledge, 2022.

Ameel, Lieven. “Narrative Forms of Adaptation, Retreat, and Mitigation in Richard Ford’s Let Me Be Frank with You.” Poetics Today 43:1, 2022, 127-147.

Ameel, Lieven. “Fraught Fictionality in Narratives of Future Catastrophe.” Narrative 29:3, 2021, 355-373.

Ameel, Lieven & Caracciolo, Marco. “Uncertain Ontologies in Twenty-First Century Storyworlds.” Style 55:3, 2021, 313-324. 

Ameel, Lieven. The Narrative Turn in Urban Planning: Plotting the Helsinki Waterfront. London: Routledge, 2020.

Ameel, Lieven & Terhi Ainiala. “Toponyms as Prompts for Presencing Place – Making Oneself at Home in Kjell Westö’s Helsinki.” Scandinavian Studies 90/2, 2018, 195-210.

Ameel, Lieven. “The city novel: measuring referential, spatial, linguistic, and temporal distances.” Teoksessa Tally, Robert T. Jr. (toim.): The Routledge Handbook of Literature and Space. London: Routledge, 2017, 233-241.

Ameel, Lieven. Helsinki in Early Twentieth-Century Literature. Urban Experiences in Finnish Prose Fiction 1890-1940. Helsinki: SKS, 2014.