Matti Hyvärinen is a research Director at the University of Tampere. Narrative theory and research are his main academic interest. His long-term project has been to investigate the conceptual history of narrative, the way the understanding about narrative changes historically, geographically and disciplinarily over the past 50 years. This project is an integral part of the sociology and history of human sciences. As a part of his work, he has re-written the histories of the narrative turns. His objective has been to initiate and carry on in-depth conversation between the literary scholars and social scientists about narrative theory. The social genres of narrative are his most recent topic of research interest. As regards narrative analysis, he has developed and taught a method he calls “expectation analysis”. Currently, he is leading an Academy of Finland Big Data research project Voices of Democracy: The Will of the People by the People and by their Representatives (2017-2021).