Our projects

This Fulbright-supported research aims to better understand the experiences of children and young people with Finland's Model for Leisure Activities (HSM) and to highlight possible gaps or missed opportunities that children and youth from marginalized groups may encounter.

The aim of Pilvi Porkola's research is to consider how performance art is taught and what social dimensions performance art teachers see in their work.

Nuppu Koivisto-Kaasik explores women piano teachers, intersectionality, and the gendered power structures of musical life in Helsinki and Tallinn between 1861 and 1924.

DMus Anne Elisabeth Piirainen, in cooperation with pianist DMus Kirill Kozlovski examine stylistic peculiarities in the compositions of the Krein family, analysing this neglected repertoire to the backdrop of the cultural development within the Soviet Union.

The project aims to create a seamless integration of acoustic and electronic sound into a single instrumental entity.

Academy of Finland Key Project by Otso Lähdeoja, targets the development of pioneering audio applications combining structure-borne sound and sensor technology into a set of Active Acoustic Objects at the interface of the material and the digital.

The research examines Aino Ackté’s and Heikki Renvall’s correspondence.

Chris Evans' and Magnus Quaife's project seeks to discover trans-geographical entanglements between education, geo-economic circumstances, cultural conditions, and communities through which alterity has been articulated and dissent enacted.

ArsADAPT creates new approaches to music studies and musician's work by integrating the sustainable future agenda and related research into artistic work.

The development and research initiative aims to bring art and artistic thinking more strongly into the crucial conversation on technology, alongside scientific and technological perspectives.

In her artistic research (2014-2021), Mari Martin makes art in urban environments in collaboration with others, while reflecting on and testing the concept of dialogue.

Artistic Doctorates in Europe: Third cycle provision in Dance and Performance (ADiE) project is investigating Practice as Research (PaR) inquiries within research level degrees in Dance and Performance.

Timothy Smith's study seeks to learn about the neurodiversity experience of students’ engagement with artistic thinking within their artistic processes.

ARTWORK aims to expand the field of work for artists and raise increased awareness of the use of artistic methods for strengthening education and social initiatives.

Research project (2015-2018) by Christina Linsenmeyer focuses on the canonization of Stradivari violins.

The project aims to build artistic research methods to examine Extractivism and ecology.

The project researches rhythm, performance and emotions in Finnish military training and capoeira for refugees.

The research concentrates on a correspondence that reveals points of view on the conventions of opera culture.

In this project, Dr. Guadalupe López-Íñiguez seeks to support children gifted for music internationally, so that they can live as agentic and healthy individuals while pursuing desirable educational outcomes in caring ecosystems.

Chromatic Noise: Mnemopolitics and Autochrome Witnesses is a practice-led research on the historicity and materiality of digital image production in an analogue production environment. From early 20th century archival photographs of the Middle East / Minor Asia / Mesopotamian region, AI-generated memory images are created and set into motion, to critically investigate whether those can represent lost or hidden histories and related memories.

The project funded by Kone Foundation (2021-2024) strengthens polyphony of urban space and thereby develops a more just city.

Towards Systems Thinking in European Music Institutions

The research project addresses neglected aspects of the music culture of Prague.

The project aims to renew archival research by interacting with discussions on cultural heritage and memory studies, developing the use of folklore materials, creating new community-based methods and considering the ethical responsibilities of archive-based scientific research and artistic activity.

Elina Saloranta's artistic research examines Finnish singer Elli Forssell.

Research project (2018-) directed by Marja-Leena Juntunen examines issues related to the implementation of the music core curricula in Basic Education and Basic Education in the Arts.

The postdoctoral project continues Vincent Roumagnac's artistic research on re-ecologizing theatre.

Anu Koskinen's project investigates who, how, and why individuals are selected to study acting at the Theatre Academy of the University of the Arts Helsinki.

The project explores the computational generation of dialogue for radio drama.

Diversity of Music Heritage in Finland focuses on heritagisation of music in Finland with emphasis on ethnicity and intergenerational relations.

Music education, professionalism, and eco-politics (EcoPolitics) interrogates the knowledge gap between music educators’ professional self-awareness in music education and their civic responsibilities as professionals in an age of uncertainty, eco-crises, and systemic ‘wicked problems’.

ELLA is a research project (2021-2024) funded by Kone foundation which investigates how embodied language learning through the arts may generate substantial change within communities.

Simo Kellokumpu's research project explores how AI alters embodied artistic practices and performance.

The Equity in Composing project (2019-) aims to reduce gender-based occupational segregation and to advance equal opportunities for participation in the field.

The research project investigates and develops artistic, technological and social prospects for participatory electronic sound arts that take place outdoors.

The multidisciplinary and multi-methods research addresses the dramatic effects that the COVID-19 pandemic has had on the entire classical music industry and educational field.

The project's research objectives are to challenge the status quo of music teacher education in Norway, and to develop innovative and collaborative practices that could foster students’ collaborative, critical and democratic capacities.

FAST45 investigates alternative futures for institutions of higher arts education in Europe.

Magnus Quaife's project sets out to develop a deeper understanding of how and why artists teach in the ways they do, to share these approaches through various means, and to foster communities of practice.

Aino Kuokkanen researches the history of the Finnish National Ballet.

Timo Heino's research project "Food" explores food from different perspectives.

The research project lead by Peter Peitsalo explores Finnish organ art.

"Forgotten Bagpipes - The Redesign of the Säkkipilli in Finland" aims at rebuilding the musical instrument and reviving the Finnish Piping tradition

The project aims to shed more light on the points of convergence between the French art historian Georges Didi-Huberman and French phenomenology.

The research project by Heidi Partti creates an international network of music teacher educators and a hybrid space for reflection and planning.

An activist music research project that uses a zero-carbon performance stage for music and other performances.

Luis Guerra's project explores collective artistic practices as informal devices of intentionless learning, radical democracy, and institutional activism.

The research project funded by the Academy of Finland (2015 - 2020) creates an international network of music teacher educators and a hybrid space for reflection and planning.

Lea Kantonen researches the arts of indeginous people in Mexico. Grabando al caminar -project took place 2017-2018 and was funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland.

This research project examines the experiences of church musicians from the time of the Covid-19 pandemic, focusing on the Greatest Christmas Carols -events.

The aim of the research project is to develop artist pedagogy and to subversively and horizontally alter the silo structures of the art university curricula.

Health, Narrative and the Arts offers training in narrative skills for professionals in healthcare and social work.

The overarching aim of this inter-cultural academic collaboration is to challenge academic ableism in higher education.

What can be done with performance? What actualises when a performance takes place, when it is documented, and when it is written about?

The project intends to define our sonic environments as sonic commons.

InChoir investigates how inclusive choral practices are developed, sustained, and understood across different European contexts, and how they can contribute to more equitable and socially sustainable cultural and educational environments.

Academy Research Fellow Otso Lähdeoja's research objective for the project (2018-2023) is to provide tools for a technologically augmented connection between musicians.

The project examines kantele improvisation within the Finnish-Karelian runosong culture, its various manifestations in its original context, and its possibilities and dimensions in modern times.

The project intends to develop, implement and evaluate a creative, person-centered approach as well as enhance cultural and artistic practices in vocational education and geriatric care in order to change the care culture in Swedish Finland in the long term.

This project examines learning and teaching environments in the three academies of the University of the Arts Helsinki.

Reflective writing courses at Uniarts Helsinki aim to foster narrative competence among social work and healthcare professionals. This research project investigates professionals’ assumptions of narrative competence, their experiences of course participation and evaluates how the learning objectives for the courses are met.

The research project examines correspondence between the years 1899 and 1936.

The research project deepens the understanding of the connections and histories between the material world and art, develops ecological material practices for artistic work, and outlines new ways of thinking about the lifecycle and recycling of art materials.

Although we are often accused of “not seeing the forest for the trees”, this project wants to look at the opposite danger, not seeing the trees for the forest, and focus on individual trees.

The research project by Nuppu Koivisto examines female musicians.

Research project by Kaarina Kilpiö explores sound elements in cinema.

The research project aims to examine the growing number of participatory music-making activities being offered to marginilized groups.

Meri Herrala's research project examines musician's role in the Cold War.

The project examines the consequences of totalitarianism for people and music communities through research and art (music), with a special focus on the Holocaust and Russian/Soviet totalitarianism, which has taken on new forms in the 2020s.

The research project by Juha Torvinen examines the significance of music to our general ecological awareness.

Jan-Erik Andersson's artistic research discusses different theories of space, place and spatiality.

An association of artists and researchers who foster cooperation between arts and academia in the Nordic-Baltic region by implementing a transdisciplinary research-creation cluster, and disseminating its practices through a series of events, workshops, and publications.

The research project explores how university collections – such as pressed plants, geological samples, medical tools, zoological specimens – are not only scientific evidence but also cultural artefacts bearing social histories, colonial legacies, and ecological change. These materials are reframed through curatorial practice.

The Erasmus+ strategic partnership developed a pedagogical approach and framework of “imaginative dialogues”. This pedagogy takes the (potential) tension between incompatible differences as a productive and engaging starting point in order to open up a dialogical ‘third space’ between them.

The project aims to expand the notion of the political in music professionalism by advancing eco-artistic imagination and transformative systems thinking within higher music education.

The artistic research project develops and specifies the question how to perform landscape today.

Through curating a diversity of disciplinary viewpoints, the goal of Planthology is to foster a broader ecological understanding of plant and human relationships.

The research project by Liisamaija Hautsalo explores Finnish opera in the context of the core value of Finnish society, equality.

How to develop ways of recognizing and engaging with the subjectivity of life forms such as trees, which we tend to consider as wholly ‘other’?

The research project examines the truthfulness of the photographic image.

Veijo Murtomäki's second topic of the research outlines the political connections of Central European composers in the 19th century as well as those of the Finnish music scene.

REACT will mobilise a knowledge-creating international cooperative network to develop a new pedagogical model for higher education institutions and to help musicians meet the challenges of working life.

A development and research project exploring how the performing arts could be integrated as part of the learning environments of comprehensive schools and pre-primary education. The project is funded by the SKAPA fund of the Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland.

Structure-borne sound can be used to transform the entire performance venue into a macro-scale resonant “instrument”.

Research project (2020-2022) by Susanna Hast and Maryam Bagheri Nesami develops artistic proposals for resistance and reparation of damage while testing the boundaries of self expression without overt exposure.

The project examines music education practices in Lyon model and Finnish research on institutional social innovations and systems analysis.

The project aims to decolonize art and museology in order to to recover the art and knowledge of Indigenous communities.

Heli Reimann's research project focuses on the history of jazz festival Tallinn 67.

Terra-Performing is a multi-disciplinary research project that investigates Extractivism by Intelligent Performance methods.

The research project by Johanna Lecklin focuses on the position of authority of the artist.

The Arts & Health Collective, by WHO and partner organisations, stimulates interdisciplinary dialogue to identify best practices in and disseminate actionable policy advice on the implementation of arts and health interventions that are socially nuanced, culturally sensitive, and people-centred.

The research initiative funded by the Academy of Finland's Strategic Research Council (2015 - 2021) explores how the arts can meet the social challenges of the 2020s.

Music researcher Markus Mantere examines musical life in Tampere.

The research project outlines the culture of piano playing, its history, conventions and its musical heritage.

Assi Karttunen's research project examines musical gestures.

The Research Pavilion, an ongoing project hosted by Uniarts Helsinki, highlights the points of view of artistic research.

The project is an inquiry through aurally-informed aesthetic research practices into the collective emergence of sense.