Astrid Joutseno (Swan)

Biography

Dr. Astrid Joutseno is researching grief as a cultural effect expressed via arts, narratives and generations and the grief of the dying as an experience of those living with cancer. She examines digital and non-digital forms of life-writing to identify and analyses narratives that address the nearing of death as a personal experience. Based on preliminary findings, she proposes that the grief of those aware of their approaching death due to terminal illness, is epistemologically valuable particularly in connection with life-writing.

Joutseno is interested in articulating her methodology which combines simultaneous research practice and compositional art making processes. In 2021 her PhD Life Writing from Birth to Death: How M/others Know won the award for best dissertation in the University of Helsinki. As an award-winning songwriter and musician, she goes by the name Astrid Swan. In her 20-year career she has published seven
albums, the latest one being D/other (2021) and a memoir, Viimeinen kirjani (2019). In August 2024 Swan publishes her first Finnish-language novel, Noitarakastaja (S&S).

From 2023 to September 2024 Joutseno/Swan was a Fellow in the Arts at Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies. She is a researcher in the Finnish Research Council project “Counter-narratives of Cancer” (2023–2027), University of Turku.

Research Interests
grief, grief of the dying, life-writing, cancer literature, digital life-writing, mothering, transdisciplinary methodologies, queer theory, feminist theory