“A doctoral conferment ceremony is, above all, an academic tradition and formality. Rather than a conclusion, it feels like a point of departure toward something new and profoundly exciting: my Kone Foundation-funded research project The Posthumous Stamps of Tom of Finland: Tracing Queer Histories from Homoerotic Mail-Order to Cruising during the Cold War. It examines, for the first time on a large scale, Tom of Finland’s mail-order network, global queer infrastructures, and the circulation of desire during the second half of the twentieth century.

However, the most significant academic milestone this spring was that Mansfield College, one of the colleges of the University of Oxford, elected me a Junior Research Fellow for 2026–2028. The fellowship is exceptionally prestigious and highly competitive, opening doors to the inner circles of international academic life. In addition, the British Academy granted me an endorsement for the Global Talent Exceptional Promise visa, recognising me as a researcher of internationally outstanding promise.

Still, academic traditions and celebrations have their place. A doctoral conferment ceremony allows one to look back briefly at what has been achieved. Research, however, always turns toward the next question. And in the end, the greatest privilege of all is still the work itself: the chance to immerse oneself fully in research.”

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