Nelli Halkosaari

I am currently working on my doctoral project: Resting Online – Digital Practices, the Self, and Contemporary Constructions of Rest. 

In an era shaped by ideals of productivity, self-optimization, and constant availability, rest has increasingly become something we are expected to “do right.” My research investigates how rest is narrated, constructed, and practiced in digital spaces, with a particular focus on YouTube vlogs related to rest and self-care. I am interested in how rest becomes meaningful in everyday life and how practices of rest both align with and diverge from dominant ideals of the efficient, disciplined, and optimized self.

Drawing on discourse analysis, affect theory, and practice theory, I explore how rest is performed at the intersection of bodies, technologies, and cultural expectations. Rather than framing rest as resistance, I focus on how individuals carve out space for rest within the structures they navigate.

The project contributes to fields such as digital sociology, media and cultural studies, and critical theories of subjectivity and everyday life.

Centre for Research on Sustainable Societal Transformation (CRS) 

My academic backgrounded is founded on an intersection of the practical and the theoretical. I have a bachelor's degree in social work and I am a licensed social worker in Sweden (socionom), during which I was specifically interested in practices of consent and sexuality within the framework of bureocratic decision making. I went on to study a master's degree in sociology, with a track on Gender, Sexuality and Society, from where I graduated Cum Laude in 2020. My interest in rest as a topic for academic inquiry was founded during this period, initially through a lens of reproductive labour and governmentality.