Hello and welcome!
I am Jonna Katto, a researcher working at the intersection of oral history, gender studies, and cultural history.
I am currently an Academy Research Fellow in the Department of Languages at the University of Helsinki, where I lead the project “Multiscalar gendered temporalities in southeastern African history: Oral voices, lived and inherited pasts, and the deep testimony of time in language” (GENTEMPO-Africa).
I also serve as Editor-in-Chief (together with Thera Crane) of the Nordic Journal of African Studies.
Research projects
Click images to enter research blogs.
Gendered Temporalities of Power in Southeastern Africa
—website of the GENTEMPO-Africa project (2023-2027)—
the Past Echoes Deep
—website of the GENHIS-Africa project (2019-2021)—
Online oral history exhibit: The Queen is the Boss!
The Queen is the Boss! is a research-based exhibit, and it brings us incredible stories of female leaders from a past forgotten in history books but remembered in oral history.
The exhibition explores how these women led, how they commanded authority, and, moreover, how they protected their people.
The exhibit is available in English, Ciyaawo, and Portuguese.
Click images below to enter exhibit.
Popular book: ‘A Avó foi Guerrilheira’ / ‘Grandma was a Guerrilla Fighter’
This dual-language popular monograph tells the history of the girls and young women who alongside men took up arms and fought for national independence against Portuguese colonial rule in the province of Niassa, northern Mozambique. Through the individual stories of thirty-five female ex-combatants, it weaves a rich historical narrative of the ten-year war (1964–1974) that brings us new knowledge about FRELIMO’s Female Detachment and the women whose lives so closely intertwined with national history.
Click image below to access book.
