Past Lecturers of the Year

AS LOY 2023, poet, author and Boston College professor of creative writing Suzanne Matson toured the U.S., talking about her Finnish identity as a writer and reading from her work, including the lauded novel Ultraviolet.

Click on the image at left to learn a bit about the Boston-based author and . Learn more at her website: suzannematson.com

Click on each past LOY for more information about the program. Some have expressed interest in appearing at FFN chapters. The information provided here is for the convenience of the chapters and their program planners. FFN offers no financial or other assistance in hosting a past LOY. All booking arrangements and agreements are strictly between the host chapter and the lecturer.

Soile Anderson and Eleanor Ostman

2019-2022

Noted Twin Cities food experts Soile Anderson and Eleanor Ostman will co-present a tasty program about Finnish foodways as Lecturer of the Year from July 1, 2019 through June 30, 2022. The Minnesotans co-authored the book Celebrations to Remember: Exceptional Party Decor and Fabulous Food.

James Ford Cooper

2018 – 2019

James Ford Cooper spent a long career in the U.S. Foreign Service, with two postings at the American Embassy in Helsinki during the Cold War: from 1976-79 as Political Counselor and 1984-86 as Deputy Chief of Mission.

Frank W. Eld

2018-2019

Frank Eld spent 50 years creating a museum to bring the bypassed town of Roseberry, Idaho back to life; his love of old log buildings, in particular, led to the research behind his book Finnish Log Construction — The Art (2013).

Centenary Lecturers

2016-2018

In recognition of the significance of the 100th anniversary of Finland’s independence in 2017, Finlandia Foundation expanded its Lecturer of the Year program in both duration and scope.

Taina Elg with Heli Sirviö

2015

Multi-talented performer Taina Elg began her career as a ballerina in Finland and found fame in Hollywood and on Broadway.

Yoopera! Suzanne Jurva & Erin Smith

2014

The Lecturer of the Year for 2014 was the filmmaking team of Suzanne Jurva and Erin Smith, who produced the documentary Yoopera! The film tells the story of the collaboration of Finnish and American talent in the making of an opera about a labor strike in 1906 in Rockland, a mining town in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.).

Yvonne Lockwood

2013

Yvonne Lockwood is a student of Finnish American culture. After living and researching traditional cultures in Bosnia, Austria and the United States she turned her attention to her own Finnish-American heritage.

Glenda Dawn Goss

2011-2012

Glenda Dawn Goss is a prominent Sibelius scholar and musicologist who teaches at the Sibelius Academy in Helsinki. She was the first LOY appointee who lives much of the year in Finland, so her availability was specific to that part of the year when she lived in the United States was at her home in the U.S

Carl Rahkonen

2010-2011

Ethnomusicologist Carl Rahkonen was selected the fourth LOY. An ethnomusicologist specializes in folk music traditions, and from his first trip to Finland, at age five, Carl remembered his grandfather playing Finnish folk music on his fiddle and harmonica.

Arnold Alanen

2009-2010

Arnold Alanen, Professor Emeritus of Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, was the third Finlandia Foundation Lecturer of the Year (LOY). He followed in the footsteps of film director Ben Strout (Fire and Ice: The Winter War Between Russia and Finland) and the duo of Susan Saarinen and Mark Coir (The Saarinen Family Design Legacy in Finland and America).

Mark Coir and Susan Saarinen

2007-2008

The theme for the second LOY was the artistry of the Saarinen family: architects Eliel and son Eero, designers Loja and Pipsan, the family homes at Hvittrask and Cranbrook, the settings of mid-20th century Finland and America. Sharing the LOY title were Susan Saarinen, the granddaughter of Eliel and Loja, and the daughter of Eero, and Lily and Mark Coir, director of archives at the Cranbrook Educational Community in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan.

Ben Strout, Fire and Ice

2006

The FFN Board chose as its first LOY filmmaker Ben Strout, director of the documentary Fire and Ice. Strout has no Finnish heritage but developed an enormous curiosity about the 1939-40 Winter War between Russia and Finland, a curiosity that he satisfied by researching and producing this documentary film.

hosting the lecturer of the year