Keynote speakers

Mette Hjort is Chair Professor and Head of the Department of Visual Studies at the Liberal Arts University of Hong Kong, Lingnan University, Affiliate Professor of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Washington, Seattle, and Honorary Professor at the Center for Modern European Studies, University of Copenhagen. She is also a Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. She holds a PhD (Centre de Recherches sur les Arts et le Langage) from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris. Her published research encompasses environmental aesthetics, film studies, and theatre studies. She is the author of Lone Scherfig's Italian for Beginners (U of Washington P), Stanley Kwan´s Center Stage (Hong Kong UP), Small Nation, Global Cinema (U of Minnesota P), and The Strategy of Letters (Harvard UP). She is also the editor or co-editor of The Education of the Filmmaker: Views from Around the World (Palgrave Macmillan, forthcoming), Instituting Cultural Studies (with Meaghan Morris, Hong Kong UP, forthcoming), Film and Risk (Wayne State UP, forthcoming), Rules and Conventions (Johns Hopkins UP), Emotion and the Arts (with Sue Laver, Oxford UP), Cinema and Nation (with Scott MacKenzie, Routledge), Purity and Provocation (with Scott MacKenzie, BFI), The Postnational Self (with Ulf Hedetoft, U of Minnesota P), The Cinema of Small Nations (with Duncan Petrie, Edinburgh UP), and Dekalog 01: On The Five Obstructions (Wallflower). Professor Hjort has also published a couple of interview books with filmmakers (one of them with Eva Jørholt and Eva Novrup Redvall) and translated two books by French art historian Louis Marin. A strong advocate of engaging practitioners in scholarly debates about film, she is working on two more interview books with filmmakers, one of them with Chinese documentary filmmakers.

Mette Hjort is currently researching a number of issues in the area of environmental aesthetics and well being/health, with a focus on knowledge transfer, policy issues, and capacity building. She is also working on film and education, with a special focus on milieu-building and capacity building by means of alternatives to the traditional conservatoire-style film schools. The focus for this second project is on the partnerships that have been established between Scandinavian and East African film professionals in an attempt to meet some of the challenges that AIDS and HIV pose in Africa.

Before joining Lingnan University, Mette Hjort held positions at McGill University in Canada, at Aalborg University in Denmark, and at Hong Kong University. She has been a Distinguished Visiting Professor at University College, London, and a Leverhulme Visiting Professor of Film Studies at St Andrews University in Scotland. Her research has been funded by the FCAR, the SSHRC, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong.

Marja-Liisa Honkasalo has recently been appointed as Professor of Culture, Health and Well Being at the University of Turku. Her theoretical interest into the questions of illness and the body commenced with semiotics and her Ph.D. was about cultural meanings of women's symptoms. Later she has enriched her theoretical framework by the phenomenology of the body and published a series of articles on chronic pain. She has been the person of charge of two large inter-disciplinary research projects on illness and social suffering, funded by the Academy of Finland. She has written about social suffering and recently, about heart disease in cultural context. Her other areas of interest are gender and death, especially suicide. Currently, her theoretical interest focuses on action and agency both within the phenomenological and STS frameworks and especially on the question about how nature is made culture by various cultural practices. She is the person in charge of two research projects "Embedded Agency: Vulnerable Lives, Contemporary Cures" and "Heartscapes – the Swedish Heart and Its Vicissitudes".

Before joining the University of Turku, Marja-Liisa Honkasalo has been working from 2006 as Professor of Medical anthropology at the University of Linköping, Sweden. She is Docent in Medical anthropology as well as Sociology at the University of Helsinki where she has taught culture and health and has been supervisor for twelve Ph.D. students. She has been working as visiting scholar at the University of Harvard and Professoressa visitanta at the Università degli Studi di Roma, La Sapienza. In 2010 she received an International Award, the Steve Polgar Professional Prize, of her article "Grips and Ties. Agency, Uncertainty and Suffering in North Karelia." Her publications are listed in the www.utu.fi/homepage.

Tiina Lindfors is a noted artist in Finland and one of the founding members of Dance Theather ERI in Turku. She works at ERI as both a dancer and choreographer. Lindfors has done over 70 choreographies for ERI. Tiina has worked with many composers, including Mikko Heiniö, withwhom she has already created five significant works. Tiina was granted the Finnish Cultural Foundation award for "influential work in dance and music" in 1999 and a prize from Swedish Cultural Foundation in Finland in 2005.

PROF. DR. MICHAEL MURRAY is Professor of Social and Health Psychology and Head of the School of Psychology at Keele University, UK. Prior to that, he held appointments at other universities in England, Northern Ireland and Canada. He has published a wide range of journal articles and chapters and (co-)authored and edited several books and collections on critical and qualitative approaches to health psychology including Qualitative Health Psychology: Theories and Methods (with Chamberlain, Sage 1999), Critical Health Psychology (Palgrave, 2004) and Health Psychology: Theory, Research & Practice (with Marks, Sage 2010). He is the Associate Editor of the Journal of Health Psychology and of Psychology & Health. He also sits on the editorial boards of several other journals including Health, Psychology & Medicine, Health Psychology Review, Arts & Health and Subjectivity. His current research interests include the use of participatory and arts-based methods to engage older people and communities in various forms of collective action. He is a Fellow of both the British Psychological Society and the Canadian Psychological Association.

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Article:
'I Don't Think They Knew We Could Do These Sorts of Things' : Social Representations of Community and Participation in Community Arts by Older People

Medicine teacher in Metropolia University of applied science at the area of medical rehabilitation. Musicians medicine teacher and medicine specialist in Sibelius-Academy from 2002.

Musicians medicine specialist in Estonian Academy of Music from 2004.

Lecturer in Tallinn University Department of Choreographyfrom 2009.

Erja Joukamo-Ampuja graduated from Sibelius-Academy 1987 making her Master of Music-degree and the Licentiate of Music –degree in year 2010.

She has completed her studies (1984-2001) in Norway, Austria, Germany, England, Canada and USA with famous pedagogues.

Joukamo-Ampuja has played in the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra years 1984-2001

and she has taught the French horn at the Sibelius-Academy since 1987, now being a assistant Professor of Horn and Pedagogy and Art Education.

She is an active recitalist and a chamber musician as well as a well known lecturer, giving masterclasses and lectures in Scandinavia, Europe, USA and Australia since year 2000.

She has been a member of the Association of Musician`s Medicine council since 2000, doing a lot of research together with music medicine doctors.

Professor, Medical Director, Etera Mutual Pension Company, Helsinki,
retired

Seppo Kaakkola
Professor, specialist in neurology and clinical pharmacology. Department of Neurology, University of Helsinki and Helsinki University Central Hospital. More than 100 publications, reviews and book chapters. The main topics include pharmacology, drug development and movement disorders (Parkinson's disease, dystonia, ataxia).

Miikka Peltomaa studied medicine at the University of Tampere, where he graduated in 1985. He is a specialist in Otolaryngology, Head and Neck Surgery (University of Helsinki, 1996) and Doctor of Medical Sciences, PhD, (University of Helsinki, 2000). Miikka Peltomaa´s publications include books and scientific papers on tropical medicine, medical ethics, medical microbiology and musicians´medicine. He is a founding member and the long standing chairman of the Finnish Musicians´ Medicine Association. From 1997 through 2009 he was the president of the Savonlinna Arts Medicine Symposium.

Aslak Savolainen, born 1950
- M.D., 1977 University of Helsinki
- Ph.D., University of Helsinki
- Associate professor in Occupational Health, University of Helsinki

- Specialist in Occupational Health
- Specialist in Internal Medicine
- Diploma in Health Administration
- Special Competens in Musicians' Medicine

- Chief Medical Officer, Finnish Broadcasting Company 1991 -

Mari Tervaniemi
Prof. Mari Tervaniemi is an expert in cognitive neuroscience of music. She has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals and several book chapters and reviews. Their topics cover auditory neurocognition, modularity of speech vs. music perception, and neural determinants of musical expertise. For further information on her and her research team, see www.cbru.helsinki.fi/music.

Heikki Tikkanen, MD, DrMedSci, is Adjunct professor and Research Director at the University of Helsinki, in the Department Sports and Exercise Medicine, in the Institute of Clinical Medicine. He is specialist in both Clinical Physiology and in Sports and Exercise Medicine. He also works as Chief Physician in the Foundation of Sport and Exercise Medicine in Helsinki. His professional activities in sports and exercise medicine include memberships of medical team in the World Championships in track and field in Helsinki 1983 and 2005 and in the European Championships in Helsinki 1994. He has been physician of the National Basketball Team and National Football Team. He has been playing electric bass and percussions in a band for several years.