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Oula Silvennoinen

Oula Silvennoinen

Docent and Academy Research Fellow

Head of NORFAS Steering Committee

Department of Philosophy, History and Art Studies
University of Helsinki, Finland

Contact
oula.silvennoinen@helsinki.fi

Webpage
https://www.helsinki.fi/en/faculty-of-arts/research/disciplines/philosophy-history-and-art/history#section-97913

Bio

Oula Silvennoinen is a Research Fellow of the Academy of Finland, University of Helsinki and affiliated researcher at the History Department at Uppsala University. His research interests include the history of policing and police institutions, the Holocaust, fascism, and the Waffen-SS in Finland, as well as the post-war politics of memory, on which he has published in Finnish, Swedish, German, English, Estonian, Ukrainian and Romanian. Silvennoinen has consistently received highly competitive research funding and has completed four externally funded research projects alongside several academic book projects. He has been a Visiting Researcher at the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Jerusalem, and the Helmut Schmidt University of the Federal Armed Forces, Hamburg. His doctoral dissertation in 2008 dealt with Finnish-German security police co-operation during 1933–1944 and brought into light the existence of a hitherto unknown special unit of the SS, the Einsatzkommando Finnland, active in northern Norway and Finland. His thesis was published in German (Geheime Waffenbrüderschaft. Die sicherheitspolizeiliche Zusammenarbeit zwischen Finnland und Deutschland, 1933–1944) by Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft in 2010. He is a recipient of the State Award for Public Information in Finland in 2017 for the book Suomalaiset fasistit (translated into Swedish as Svart gryning: Fascismen i Finland 1918–1944, Lind & Co., 2018). Silvennoinen is a frequent expert commentator on contemporary fascism and Finland’s wartime history. Silvennoinen is co-head of the NORFAS steering committee and researcher in the NORFAS research project Inception: The Birth of Nordic Fascism, based at Uppsala University, which he developed together with Nicola Karcher.

Research interests

  • Holocaust and genocide studies
  • History of fascist and far-right movements
  • History of policing and police institutions
  • Biography and history

Featured publications

Silvennoinen, Oula. 2018. “Demokratins framgångshistoria? Skogsindustrin, arbetsmarknaden och en fascistisk samhällssyn 1918-1940.” In Meinander, Henrik, Petri Karonen, and Kjell Östberg, eds., Demokratins drivkrafter. Kontext och särdrag in Finlands och Sveriges demokratier 1890-2020. Helsinki and Stockholm: SLS/Appell.
Roselius, Aapo, Oula Silvennoinen, and Marko Tikka. 2018. Svart gryning. Fascismen i Finland, 1918-44. Stockholm: Lind & Co.
Silvennoinen, Oula. 2015. “Home, Religion, Fatherland. Movements of the Radical Right in Finland.” Fascism: Journal of Comparative Fascist Studies 4.
Silvennoinen, Oula. 2012. “Beyond ‘Those Eight’: Deportations of Jews from Finland 1941-1942.” In H. Worthen and S. Muir, eds., Finland’s Holocaust: Silences of History. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan.
Silvennoinen, Oula. 2010. Geheime Waffenbrüderschaft. Die sicherheitspolizeiliche Zusammenarbeit zwischen Finnland und Deutschland 1933-1944. Darmstadt: WBG.