We would like to introduce our Fellow ELBOW research members – or FELBOWs – to our blog readers.

The first blog post of our series of introductions is dedicated to our team leader. So, who is the captain of our ELBOW research team, Associate Professor Soile Ylivuori? Continue reading the interview and you will know!

Who are you?

I’m Soile Ylivuori, the PI and leader of ELBOW. I’m currently employed as an associate professor in history at the University of Helsinki.

How did you get interested in history in the first place?

Well, I guess my story is a pretty basic one. I was a massive Asterix and Tintin fan as a kid, and then I happened to have amazing history teachers in both middle school and high school. When I realized that history isn’t about the names of kings and dates of battles, things got interesting! (I also have a terrible memory and can’t remember either of those to save my life). The main draw in history for me is trying to get into past peoples’ heads, so to say, and try to understand how they understood the world around them.

What is your research topic in this project?

I’m leading the project as a whole (or trying to!) while also doing research in early medical electricity in the Anglophone world. I’m especially interested in questions related to “alternative” ontologies and epistemologies: how 18^th-century people understood their bodies and the functioning of electricity in ways that differ radically from our understandings, and how their beliefs and experiences informed the scientific knowledge they were building.

What is the best part of being a historian or a researcher?

Ugh, this is a difficult question, because I love so many aspects of it! I love visiting archives in foreign countries – nothing beats the feeling of a new discovery (which unfortunately happens much more rarely than you’d think). Then again, finally getting your findings on a paper in a coherent form is pretty sweet as well. Most of these things you can do while wearing yoga pants, which is an added bonus.

What is the weirdest thing you have come up with in an archive?

Nothing that weird. Once I was the first one to open some letters after they were sealed and sent in 1756 from the then-yellow-fever-ridden Jamaica and felt the need to quickly google how long viruses survive… Didn’t catch anything. I lead a boring life.

How would you describe ELBOW project in one sentence?

Who knew history could be so electrifying??