Anniversary Lecture Series
The 2025-2026 Academic Year is the 30th Anniversary of the Chair in Finnish Studies as well as the 60th Anniversary of Lakehead University. To recognize these milestone, the Chair in Finnish Studies Advisory Committee has organized a virtual lecture series featuring presentation by several past holders of the Chair in Finnish Studies.
The lecture series is currently being confirmed. Please check back soon.
Wednesday, 21 January 2026, 12pm EST (7pm Finland)Acculturation or autonomy? Controversy over the status of the Sámi in Finland during the interwar period Kari Alenius is Professor in General History and Head of Department at the University of Oulu. His focus in on international and cultural interaction, and within this area he has specialized in the history of Finland and Estonia, history of ethnic relations, and history of information warfare. His latest monograph (Brill/Schöningh 2022) deals with ethnopolitics from a comparative perspective (Kari Alenius & Saulius Kaubrys: Balancing between National Unity and “Multiculturalism”. National Minorities in Lithuania and Finland 1918-1939).ZOOM: | |
Wednesday, 18 February 2026, 12pm EST (7pm Finland)Forest Management Collaboration with Indigenous Communities in Ontario Dr. Sikanen has been working 30 years with industrial timber supply R&D. 1999 he had his PhD of customized wood purchases and supply at the University of Joensuu, Finland. Since 2001 he has been focusing on wood biomass for energy and international technology and know-how transfer. In Luke and former Finnish Forest Research Institute (Metla) he has been leading and participating R&D and consulting processes in Finland, Scotland, Germany, Italy, Russia, Iceland, Portugal and Canada. Sikanen worked also as a professor of energy pellet research at the University of Eastern Finland 2008-2013 and as an adjunct professor of Lakehead University (ON) 2018- where he was the Chair in Finnish Studies in the autumn semester 2017. Sikanen has about 100 publications of which about 40 are peer reviewed and his network in LinkedIn has over 1200 professionals. | |
Wednesday, 18 March 2026, 12pm EST (7pm Finland)Title TBA Dr. Antti Häkkinen held the position as the sixth Chair of Finnish Studies during the 2010-2011 academic year. A Professor of Economic and Social History, Dr. Häkkinen taught two courses in Finnish history for the Department of History and undertook community-based research on contemporary and historic Finnish immigration. | Click here to participate |
Wednesday, 15 April 2026, 12pm EST (7pm Finland)Cookbooks for Upstairs: Ethnicity, Class and Gender in Perspective Hanna Snellman is Vice-Rector of the University of Helsinki since August 2018. Before appointment as Vice-Rector, she was full-time Vice-Dean and later Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the same university (2014-2018). She has been Professor of European Ethnology at the University of Helsinki since 2012, and Professor at the University of Jyväskylä before that. In 2007, she was Finnish Chair at Lakehead University. Her three sons went to Sir Winston Churchill Highschool and the whole family enjoyed their stay in Thunder Bay a lot. Snellman’s research has focused since the 1990s on the ethnography of mobility. Her recent publications deal with burial wishes of immigrants and benefits of migration and return migration to the sending country. | |
Wednesday, 20 May 2026, 12pm EST (7pm Finland)Title TBA Dr. Lassi Heininen is a political scientist, Professor (emeritus), Visiting Researcher at Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki (2024-2026), Adjunct Graduate Faculty Member at Trent University, Ontario, and Editor of Arctic Yearbook. He is also director of international doctor school, Calotte Academy, and leader of UArctic Thematic Network on Geopolitics & Security. His research fields include IR (with a recent focus on cooperation), Geopolitics, Security Studies, Environmental Politics, and Arctic Studies. Among his latest publications are “From Neutrality and Peacemaking to Military Alignment – Finland’s Illusive Geopolitical Imagination” (Global Arctic. The New Dynamics of Arctic Governance by Palgrave Macmillan); “Environmental Security is ‘Must’ vis-a-vis Military Security, Not a ‘Substitution’” (Strategic Analysis by Routledge); ”Geopolitical Features, Common Interests and the Climate Crisis: The Case of the Arctic” (Geneva Paper 35/2024). | |
DATE TBAFinns in in North Russia and Siberia in the 1930s Aappo Kähönen is Doctor of Social Science and associate professor (title of docent) in the Helsinki University. He has published on Finnish-Soviet relations from the 1920s to 1970s, as well as on Soviet economic reforms during the cold war. He was Finnish Chair at the Lakehead University in 2020-2021. Recently he has been employed in the Finnish National Archives project Finns in Russia, 1917–1964, and is writing a book on Finnish immigrants in Northern Russia, both in Finnish and in English. |
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DATE TBAFinnish Canadian homesteads, Finn Halls and Finnishness on the Trail of Finnish Oula Seitsonen, Associate Professor (Title of Docent) in University of Oulu, was the eleventh Lakehead University Chair in Finnish Studies during the 2022-2023 academic year. During his time at Lakehead University, he was based at the Department of Anthropology, where he gave graduate-level guest lectures on modern conflict archaeology in the Nordic countries. Most importantly, together with his Canadian colleagues he initiated research project titled “Finnish-Canadian homestead research in the footsteps of archaeologist Sakari Pälsi.” Sakari Pälsi (1882-1965) was a pioneer of Finnish archaeology in the early 1900s, and in 1927 he travelled through Canada with his wife visiting Finnish immigrant communities along the way, also in Port Arthur (Thunder Bay). Around Thunder Bay, he for example visited lumber camps and took part on fishing and other trips to the countryside where the Finns lived outside Port Arthur. Pälsi published still the same year a book describing the lives of the Canadian Finns titled “Suuri, kaunis ja ruma maa” (Eng. Big, beautiful and ugly country). | |
DATE TBATitle TBA Dr. Jaana Laine was the eighth Chair of Finnish Studies during the 2018 winter term. During her tenure, she taught courses in the Faculty of Natural Resources Management and Department of History and conducted research on the human-forest relationship, focusing on Finnish Canadians in Northwestern Ontario. She is currently a professor at LUT University. |