Otso Lähdeoja and Susanna Välimäki appointed to the joint professorships of Uniarts Helsinki and the University of Helsinki

Uniarts Helsinki and the University of Helsinki are launching closer cooperation in the research of arts and culture. The fields of the joint professorships are arts research and artistic research.

Uniarts Helsinki and the University of Helsinki have established two joint professorships, and the appointees are composer and Academy of Finland research fellow Otso Lähdeoja (PhD) and docent Susanna Välimäki (PhD).

By establishing joint professorships, Uniarts Helsinki and the University of Helsinki are engaging in closer research cooperation. The universities aim to take advantage of each other’s strengths in the development of their research and teaching environments.

Otso Lähdeoja’s professorship is administratively based at Uniarts Helsinki, and it centres on artistic research. The focus in the post is promoting artistic research and doctoral education. The primary goal is to develop multidisciplinary research projects in accordance with Uniarts Helsinki’s new strategy.

Susanna Välimäki’s professorship is administratively based at the Faculty of Arts at the University of Helsinki, and it centres on arts research. The focus in the post lies on theories and methods of arts research, multidisciplinarity in the arts, and the relationship between the arts and society.

The purpose of both professorships is to develop arts research as a collaborative effort between Uniarts Helsinki and the University of Helsinki.

Doctor of Philosophy, Academy of Finland research fellow Otso Lähdeoja has a background in composing and research and is known for working at the intersection of the arts, technology, and the humanities. He has carried out research at Uniarts Helsinki since 2014, and since 2018, he has studied intersubjectivity in music as a research fellow funded by the Academy of Finland.

In 2014–2017, Lähdeoja worked as a postdoctoral researcher for the Academy of Finland. In 2016–2018, he led a spearhead project funded by the Academy of Finland as well as a Nordic project titled Active Acoustic Augmented Instruments. Besides conducting research, Lähdeoja contributes to the arts scene also as a composer and performer of contemporary and electronic music. He has composed music for numerous contemporary dance pieces and created sound installations, performance art, and media art. Lähdeoja completed a doctorate at the CICM research centre (Centre de recherche en informatique et création musicale) at the University of Paris 8 in 2011. After his doctoral degree and before coming to Uniarts Helsinki, Lähdeohja conducted artistic research in universities in Belgium and Canada.

Lähdeoja will begin in his five-year post as associate professor on 1 January 2021.

Doctor of Philosophy, docent Susanna Välimäki is a versatile researcher of music. Her fields of expertise include cultural musicology, music analysis, audio-visual music research, women’s history in music, activist music research, and eco-musicology. Välimäki completed a doctorate at the University of Helsinki in 2005 with a dissertation titled Subject Strategies in Music: A Psychoanalytic Approach to Musical Signification. She has worked as a university lecturer in musicology at the University of Turku since 2011. She was given the Teacher of the Year Award in 2013 by Humanitas, a student advocacy association for students of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Turku.

Susanna Välimäki is also a non-fiction writer, columnist, critic, and an active populariser of science. She is currently working on books about Finnish female composers from the 1800s and contemporary Finnish music of the 2000s.

Välimäki will begin in her post on 1 December 2020.

Further information

Jaana Erkkilä-Hill
Vice Rector for Research and Doctoral Education, Uniarts Helsinki
jaana.erkkila-hill@uniarts.fi
050 345 3128

Pirjo Hiidenmaa
Dean of the Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki
pirjo.hiidenmaa@helsinki.fi
0294154001