Dr Astrid Joutseno

Dr Astrid Joutseno is a scholar, known as a writer and an award-winning songwriter as Astrid Swan. Her current research centers the grief of the dying, and the grief of those living with cancer. She studies them in life-writing, especially autobiographical expression. Dr Joutseno is currently developing concepts for the naming and recognition of the grief of the dying, which has largely remained unacknowledged. Her research is part of the Finnish Research Council Project Counter-Narratives of Cancer: Shaping Narrative agency, 2023-2027 - https://sites.utu.fi/counternarratives/en/.

Dr Joutseno/Swan is also exploring grief as a cultural affect. Here she employs both creative and research methods. She studies the archival material of two Finnish women musicians of the 20th century: her great aunt, pianist Astrid Joutseno (1899-1962) and her professional and life partner, violinist Kerttu Wanne (1905-1963). So far, the project has yielded a research article and the first part of a larger compositional work. Joutseno/Swan is going to develop the direction of this project of explorative life-writing during her scholarly visit at OCLW. 

In 2023-2024 Joutseno/Swan was the Fellow in Arts at the Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies. She published her latest album D/other in 2021 (Soliti). For her album From the Bed and Beyond (2017) she was awarded the prestigious Teosto-Award in 2018. In 2019, her Finnish-language memoir Viimeinen kirjani: kirjoituksia elämästä (Nemo) was published. In 2024 Swan debuted as a novelist with Noitarakastaja (S&S).