Staff Profile

Research interests

Contemporary social and political theory (especially feminist theory and biopolitics), the politics of population, political economy, Palestine, popular culture

Qualifications

• Docent, Gender Studies, University of Helsinki
• PhD, Political Science, University of Helsinki
• MSc, Political Science, University of Helsinki
• BA, Political Science, University of Helsinki

Previous positions

• Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Helsinki
• Research Fellow, Birkbeck, University of London
• Visiting Lecturer, University of Groningen
• Visiting Reseach Fellow, Waseda University

Other roles

• Co-editor, Contemporary Political Theory

My research is mainly in feminist political theory and biopolitics. My book The Biopolitics of Gender (Oxford University Press, 2015) introduced a new theoretical and methodological approach to gender. It theorises and historicises gender as an apparatus of power developed initially in 1950s and 1960s US psychiatry to govern life and labour. I trace how it was then taken up by feminist theory, demography, and EU public policy as a means of accessing and struggling over the control of populations. Overall the book reconsiders the emancipatory potential of the idea of 'gender' for feminist theory and politics today. The book has been reviewed in Gender & Society, Hypatia, Journal of Gender Studies, Feminist Theory, Perspectives on Politics, Political Quarterly, Environment and Planning D: Society & Space, Choice, Times Higher Education, American Review of Politics and LSE Review of Books and won the 2017 International Studies Association's Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Book Award.

I am currently working on two projects:

1) The Commodification of Feminist Activism. This project, funded by a Senior Fellowship from the Kone Foundation, examines the politics of objects in feminist protest. Propelled by the recent mass popularisation of feminist commodities, I examine the history of objects and material production in feminism and I develop the concept of 'feminist commodity activism' to understand how commodification has shaped the recent revival of feminist activism. 

2) Social Reproduction in Palestine. This ongoing research examines the effects of settler colonialism on women's lives and social reproduction in Palestine. With Dr Mark Griffiths, we examine the ways in which occupation shapes the sexual division of labour in West Bank, and its effects on women's everyday lives. We are members of the Palestine Research Group.

Awards

• APSA Okin-Young Award in Feminist Political Theory, 2021
• ISA Feminist Theory and Gender Studies Book Prize, 2017

Current funded projects

• The Commodification of Feminist Activism (Kone Foundation Senior Fellowship, 2020-2023)

Past funded projects

• Checkpoints Beyond the Checkpoint: Implications for women left at home (British Academy/Leverhulme small grant, 2018-2019)
• Biopolitics and Democracy (Academy of Finland project grant, PI Sergei Prozorov, 2015-2019)
• Politics and Numbers: Policy Instruments and Global Governance (Academy of Finland project grant, PI Tero Erkkilä, 2013-2017) 

I am on research leave from August 2020 to July 2023.

Past modules

• POL2113: Sex, Gender and Power
• POL8058: Sex, Race and Biopolitics

PhD Supervision

Cai Weaver (University of Helsinki): The Russian Conservative Turn: Biopolitics and Sexuality

Hattie Cansino: The Politics of Paradise: Aesthetic Fantasies of Otherwise within Tourist Economies in Northeast Brazil (ESRC funded, completed 2021)

Hala Shoman: Palestinian Women at the Intersection of Colonial and Patriarchal Violence: Cultural Renegotiations of Religion and Tradition in Gaza. (ESRC funded)

Stuti Prahdan: Sikkimese Women's Differentiated Citizenship: Postcoloniality, Indigeneity, and Gender in India. (ESRC funded)

• Repo J, Richter H. An Evental Pandemic: Thinking the Covid-19 'Event' with Deleuze and Foucault. Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory 2022, 23(2-3), 220-237.
• Griffiths M, Repo J. Women and checkpoints in Palestine. Security Dialogue 2021, 52(3), 249-265.
• Griffiths M, Repo J. Women’s Lives Beyond the Checkpoint in Palestine. Antipode 2020, 52(4), 1104-1121.
• Repo J. Feminist Commodity Activism: The New Political Economy of Feminist Protest. International Political Sociology 2019, 14(2), 215–232.
• Repo J. Governing Juridical Sex: Gender Recognition and the Biopolitics of Trans Sterilisation in Finland. Politics & Gender 2019, 15(1), 83-106.
• Repo J. Chloë Taylor, Foucault Feminism and Sex Crimes. Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews 2019.
• Repo J. Gary Becker’s economics of population: reproduction and neoliberal biopolitics. Economy and Society 2018, 47(2), 234-256.
• Griffiths M, Repo J. Biopolitics and Checkpoint 300 in Occupied Palestine: Bodies, Affect, Discipline. Political Geography 2018, 65, 17-25.
• Repo J. The Life Function: The Biopolitics of Sexuality and Race Revisited. In: Richter, H, ed. Biopolitical Governance: Race, Gender and Economy. London and New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2018, pp.41-57.
• Repo J. Thanatopolitics or biopolitics? Diagnosing the racial and sexual politics of the European far-right [Bodies in politics]. Contemporary Political Theory 2016, 15(1), 110-118.
• Repo J. Gender Equality as Bioeconomic Governmentality in a Neoliberal EU. In: Prozorov, S; Rentea, S, ed. Routledge Handbook of Biopolitics. London: Routledge, 2016, pp.157-168.
• Repo J. The Biopolitics of Gender. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.
• Repo J, Yrjölä R. 'We’re All Princesses Now': Sex, Class and Neoliberal Governmentality in the Rise of Middle-Class Monarchy. European Journal of Cultural Studies 2015, 18(6), 741-760.
• Repo J. Gender Equality as Biopolitical Governmentality in a Neoliberal European Union. Social Politics 2014, 23(2), 307-328.
• Repo J. Herculine Barbin and the Omission of Biopolitics from Judith Butler’s Gender Genealogy. Feminist Theory 2014, 15(1), 73-88.
• Repo J. Reproduction. In: Gibbons,MT; Coole,D; Ellis,E; Ferguson,K, ed. The Encyclopedia of Political Thought. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2014, pp.3222-3226.
• Repo J. The Biopolitical Birth of Gender: Social Control, Hermaphroditism, and the New Sexual Apparatus. Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 2013, 38(3), 228-244.
• Repo J. The Life Function: The Biopolitics of Sexuality and Race Revisited. Theory & Event 2013, 16(3).
• Repo J. The Governance of Fertility Through Gender Equality in the EU and Japan. Asia Europe Journal 2012, 10(2-3), 199-214.
• Repo J. "Gender” biopolitiikkana. Naistutkimus-Kvinnoforskning 2012, 3, 51-55.
• Repo J. Sexuality, Race and the Biopolitics of Difference. In: Kajanus,A;Meinke,M, ed. Perspectives on Difference: Makings and Workings of Power. Helsinki: Renvall Institute Publications 30, Unigrafia, 2012.
• Kantola J, Norocel C, Repo J. Gendering violence in the school shootings in Finland. European Journal of Women’s Studies 2011, 18(2), 183-197.
• Repo J, Yrjölä R. The Gender Politics of Celebrity Humanitarianism in Africa. International Feminist Journal of Politics 2011, 13(1), 44-62.
• Repo J. A Feminist Reading of Gender and National Memory at the Yasukuni Shrine. Japan Forum 2008, 20(2), 219-243.
• Repo J. Sukupuoli, toiseus ja väkivaltaisuuden rajat: Diskursseja naisterroristeistä ja naissotilaista Irakin sodassa. Naistutkimus-Kvinnoforskning 2007, 4, 4-15.