Josefine Wälivaara is currently a postdoc in the ERC-funded research project DISLIFE Liveable disabilities: Life courses and opportunity structures across time. Her postdoctoral project In time: Queer(ing) Temporal Existence and Disability in Contemporary Cinema explores fictional narratives of disability in relation to concepts such as queer time and chrononormativity. The project analyses depictions of romantic relationships, identity, and sexuality in order to investigate societal and normative views on disabled people and sexuality; and investigate how these stories portray and promote or reject liveable disabilities. The project focus on two main questions:
How has relationships, sexuality and identity of disabled people been portrayed in Swedish film from 2000-present?
How has contemporary popular genre film and television from the US depicted disability as liveable in terms of sexuality and identity construction?
Josefine Wälivaara obtained her Ph.D. in drama-theatre-film at the Department of Culture and Media Studies, Umeå University. Her thesis, Dreams of a Subversive Future: Sexuality, (Hetero)normativity, and Queer Potential in Science Fiction Film and Television, was published in 2016.
Her academic interests are normativity, disability, sexuality, queer theory, gender, storytelling, cinema, television, and speculative fiction.