THE INSTITUTE ANNOUNCES TWO NEW PROGRAMME MANAGERS

Adjunct Professor and Art Historian Johanna Vakkari has been appointed as the Institute’s new Art & Culture Programme Manager starting from January 2014. Antti Halonen will continue in his role as the Programme Manager of the Institute’s Society Programme.

Johanna Vakkari is leaving her post as the Senior Coordinator at the Fine Arts Academy of Finland. She has researched Italian Renaissance Art, Historiography and Theory and Methods of Art History. She has greatly contributed to many publications in the field of art history, and she has been the Editor-in-Chief of the Finnish art history publication Studies in Art History as well as web-journal Tahiti. She has acted as the President of the Finnish Art Historians’ Society and is a board member of NORDIK (Nordic Committee of Art History).

“Johanna has strong international networks. Her capacity to contextualize cultural phenomena is excellent, and she is very strong in cross-disciplinary thinking. Due to her work history as a university lecturer and senior coordinator at the Fine Arts Academy she moves fluently from the art world to the academic scene and back” says Susanna Pettersson, Director of the Finnish Institute in London.

Antti Halonen was educated in Finland (Turku University, MSocSc, Contemporary History, Political Science, 2008) and UK (University College London, Information Studies, 2011). He has recently started his PhD for the University of Helsinki with a working title “Development and intrinsic justification of governmental transparency: from reactive freedom of information to proactive open data regimes”. He has worked as the acting Head of Society Programme, and independent researcher at the Finnish Institute in London, introducing open knowledge as one of the focus areas for the Institute. Prior to this he has worked in various information management roles, amongst others, at the Ministry of Defence in Finland.

“Antti Halonen has excellent networks in the UK and Ireland, he is experienced in project management and has well-developed skills in spotting the new. He is a productive performer and a sophisticated writer. Apart from that; he has a clear vision of the potential of cross-disciplinary programming,” concludes Susanna Pettersson.