Kari Silvola

Kari Silvola is a researcher and non-fiction author working on the history of sexuality, queer history and visual culture. He holds a PhD from the University of Jyväskylä and is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Faculty of History at the University of Oxford and a Junior Research Fellow at Mansfield College. His research focuses on sexuality, desire, shame, visibility and concealment, and changing understandings of sexuality. His expertise includes Tom of Finland, Nordic queer history, queer visual culture, autoethnography and archival research. His current project, The Posthumous Stamps of Tom of Finland, explores histories of desire during the Cold War through Tom of Finland’s international mail-order network and urban cruising cultures in Helsinki, London and Los Angeles, combining archival research and oral history with digital and spatial methods. Before pursuing an academic career, Silvola worked for many years as a journalist, editor and editor-in-chief. His work crosses fields.