Malin Grahn-Wilder

Malin Grahn-Wilder is a writer, dancer and scholar of philosophy. At the Saari Residence, she will begin work on her new non-fiction book on the philosophy of emotions. In 2013, Grahn-Wilder defended her dissertation on concepts of gender and sexuality in ancient stoic philosophy and received her doctorate in theoretical philosophy from the University of Helsinki. At the moment, she is a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä. She has also taught philosophy and gender studies at a university level as well as traditional jazz dance to both children and adults for several years.

What intrigues Grahn-Wilder the most about the philosophy of emotions is the simultaneously private and general nature of the subject. Emotions are a personal experience but they also have an important social dimension. Hatred and hate speech are a particularly relevant example of how emotions aren’t merely a private matter but rather strongly affect society and other people.

In her work, Grahn-Wilder hopes to intertwine the philosophical theory of emotion and the practical side of facing and working with emotions. She is confronted most concretely with the latter in her work as a dancer and teacher of dance. For her book, she intends indeed to draw not only from her experiences as a philosopher but also from those as a dancer. In the peace and quiet of the Saari Residence, Grahn-Wilder will focus on writing the first draft of her manuscript.