...CONFERENCE SPEAKERS' BIOGRAPHIES...
Mari Mäkiranta
Mari Mäkiranta is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lapland, Faculty of Art and Design, and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Jyväskylä, Department of Music, Art and Culture Studies. In 2008 she earned her doctoral degree related on autobiographical and self-portrait photography art. Between 2010-2014 she conducted a postdoctoral research project, exploring young people’s living environments in different European countries. Mäkiranta’s work has focused on socially engaged visual arts, feminist theories and arts-based research. She intertwines communal, embodied, experimental and multisensory expressions in her art practices. She is a Principal Investigator in the Academy of Finland awarded Floating Peripheries – Making Sense of the Place sub-project (2017-2021). Her case study focuses on marginalized spaces, affective encounters and gendered experiences in Arctic communities.
Eija Timonen
Dr Eija Timonen is a professor of Media Studies at the University of Lapland and an adjunct professor at Aalto University in the Department of Film, TV and Scenography. Timonen has led several national and international research projects, among others the screenwriting research project "The Aristotle in Change” funded by Research Academy of Finland. For the last ten years she has photographed the complex structures of ice, and the outcomes of this activity have been seen in different exhibitions and articles.
Maiju Loukola
Maiju is a Helsinki-based artist-researcher and a Doctor of Arts, currently affiliated at Aalto University. Her primary interests are in politics of space, artistic research, and visual cultures and theories. Maiju is one of the “Floating Peripheries – mediating the sense of place” project researchers and a founding member of the Expanded Scenography research group at the Department of Film, Tv & Scenography at Aalto. Maiju curated the Prague Quadrennial 2015 Finnish exhibition that got the 1st award for Media in Performance.
Liisa Ikonen
Doctor of Arts Liisa Ikonen is a scenographer and Professor in Design for the Performing Arts at Aalto University, School of Arts, Design and Scenography, Espoo. She is the head of Expanded Scenography Research Group and primary investigator of Floating Peripheries research project at Aalto University. Liisa Ikonen approaches the peripheries as spatial abnormalities, and she is interested in the phenomenon Space of the Abnormal. In her research abnormalities appear as deviations from regular, healthy, or conventional and the abnormal spaces are located outside of the conventional or familiar spatial practices, farther away, invisible, or isolated, but always also in relation to them.
Jonna Tolonen
Doctor of Arts Jonna Tolonen is a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland. She is a researcher, photographer and artist who focuses on the intersections of street, politics and society. She develops and uses interdisciplinary methods to understand the complexity of issues such as gentrification and activism. Jonna has published widely on the Spanish wall writings and street art. Jonna concluded her Ph.D. dissertation 'Visage of Madrid –Illegal Graffiti as a Part of Spanish 15-M Protests' in 2016.
Gabi Schillig
Gabi Schillig studied Architecture in Coburg and completed her postgraduate studies in Conceptual Design at the Städelschule Frankfurt am Main before founding her 'Studio for Dialogical Spaces' in Berlin in 2008. She has exhibited internationally and received several fellowships and prizes. Since 2005 she has been teaching or lecturing in various transdisciplinary and international contexts. From 2012 to 2018 she was teaching as Professor for Spatial Design at the Düsseldorf University of Applied Sciences - Peter Behrens School of Arts at the Faculty of Design. In April 2018 she was appointed as Professor for Spatial Design and Exhibition Design at the Berlin University of the Arts at the Institute for Transmedia Design.
Annette Arlander
Annette Arlander, DA, is an artist, researcher and pedagogue. Previously professor of performance art and theory at Theatre Academy Helsinki, professor of artistic research at University of the Arts Helsinki, postdoctoral fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, she is presently professor of performance, art and theory at Stockholm University of the Arts, visiting researcher at Academy of Fine Arts, Uniarts Helsinki, primary investigator of the Academy of Finland funded research project 'How to do things with performance?' and the Swedish Research Council funded artistic research project 'Performing with Plants'.
Tina Jonbu and Jana Unmüßig
Jana Unmüßig, born 1980, holds a Doctor of Arts from the Performing Arts Research Centre of the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki. Her research interests are among others: visual epistemology and composition in the context of an expanded choreographic practice; artistic research; performative writing; the philosophical-political implications of breath and the politics of air. Her choreographic work has been presented internationally.
Tina Jonbu, born 1968, is currently a Research Fellow at the Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Department of Art and Craft. Her work has been presented on various international platforms since 1998. Tina does also public and site-specific projects, last public art project was “Ephemerality – A Permanent Collection”, University of Bergen, The Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design.
Tine Segers
Tine Segers is a PhD researcher of Hasselt University, of the Faculty of Architecture and Arts. Together with Jan Vanrie, Jasmien Herssens and Oswald Devisch, she is investigating the phenomenon of demographic shrinkage in the growing region of Flanders, which is the Northern part of Belgium. They do research into the context of villages and the possibilities to apply design strategies that work with the opportunities of demographic shrinkage. As a researcher in architecture she explores transdiscplinary methods for spatial context-analysis of more peripheral locations and enhance the quality of our physical environment.
Eimear Tynan
Eimear Tynan is an Irish landscape architect and holds a Master of Landscape Architecture from both University College Dublin and Tromsø Academy of Landscape and Territorial Studies. She has previously practiced as a landscape architect in Dublin, Bergen and Tromsø over a ten year period and is an affiliated member of the Irish Landscape Institute. Since 2015 she has taught at the Tromsø Academy of Landscape and Territorial Studies. She has also presented and published work on the topics of permafrost and Arctic heritage; sensory tools for landscape architecture; and landscape representation
Esthir Lemi
Esthir Lemi focuses on documentation of the artistic process and reality as well as on the complementarity of art forms, and how technology interferes with its schemes. Her research, based on haptics, is aimed at a broad public in order to create an easily accessible innovative platform for both artist/engineers and the audience.
Christoph Solstreif-Pirker
Christoph Solstreif-Pirker is a performance artist and theorist, working within drawing, music, dancing, and writing. He graduated from Graz University of Technology with a degree in architecture, after having studied at the University of Music and Performing Arts Graz and the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen, Denmark. Currently, he is working on his PhD thesis is entitled “Performative ontologies of the indefinite – Scores of a new spatial construction.” His artistic research is situated between ecofeminism, psychoanalysis, and non-philosophy – investigating spaces of warfare, politics, and ideology, human and non-human relationships, and artistic practices in the Anthropocene. He is Assistant Professor at the Institute for Architecture and Landscape at the Graz University of Technology, unfolding contemporary landscapes, environments, and ecologies.
Sonja Salomäki
Textile artist graduated from the UIAH 2006, concentrated in refreshing the Finnish textile tradition. Her special interests are: the interaction of people and the surroundings, the urban environment, the interconnection between life forms, the psychology of climate change. She is a PhD Student in the University of Lapland since 2017, and her research theme is 'Climate art activism and its possible functionality and effectiveness.'
