Music research shapes our understanding of music and the world. Since the research conclusions are always arrived at following a certain methodology, Professor Pirkko Moisala has sought to renew the perspectives and methods of music research. The research also draws attention and prestige to its subject.

My best moments at the University of Helsinki are the lively academic debates. Such discussions can be sparked with the students at a lecture series, among thesis writers at a research seminar, or between colleagues at academic conferences.

Professor Pirkko Moisala has served as the president for such academic organisations and research teams as the Finnish Society of Ethnomusicology and the ”Music and Gender” research team for the International Council for Traditional Music, which she also founded.

Musical conventions participate in creating gender, and, in turn, the gender structure conditions music. Many of the works by Pirkko Moisala deal with the relationships between culture, gender and music. Moisala has written about women classical music composers in order to fill out the gaps in music history. She has also authored a book on the career of Kaija Saariaho, including the reception of her music, her compositional processes and her development as a composer.

The research project Indigenous Musics and Well-Being, led by Professor Pirkko Moisala, studies music as a tool for ethnic empowerment, social cohesion, and cultural sustainability: “The well-being of both the community and the individual is built on mental, physical, social and economic factors, which can be influenced by musical practices.”

• ‘Deleuzian Music Research’ project, led by Pirkko Moisala website

• Pirkko Moisala's video interview on her Indigenous Musics and Well-Being research project, which studies the musical conventions of the Sámi people, the Nepalese, the indigenous Canadians and Bolivian Cholitas, as promoters of well-being in the community. Humanistinen tutkimus vaikuttaa ('Humanities research…