Taru Leppänen

I began my studies in musicology at the University of Turku in 1983, completed Master of Arts degree in 1991, Licentiate degree in 1996 and PhD in 2001 in Musicology at the University of Turku. During my doctoral studies, I also studied at the Universities of Utrecht and Uppsala and at the Utrecht Academy of Music, and graduated as a flute teacher from the Turku Conservatory.

My doctoral thesis Viulisti, musiikki ja identiteetti: Sibelius-viulukilpailu suomalaisessa mediassa 1995 (2000) [Violinist, music and identity: Sibelius violin competition in Finnish media 1995] was about Finnish media texts concerning the Sibelius violin competition in 1995. The thesis analyses intersectional differences in media texts, focusing on how gender, nationality, ethnicity and race were constructed in newspapers, television and radio.

Since my doctoral PhD, I have studies children's music cultures. In the book Vallatonta musiikkia. Lastenmusiikkikulttuuri 2000-luvun alun Suomessa (Helsinki: Gaudeamus, 2010), I explore music in children's everyday lives from intersectional and postcolonial perspectives. The study is based on ethnographic fieldwork in day-care centres, music festivals, music schools and children's homes. It also analyses song texts for children's music, children's music videos and performances by children's musicians. The book shows how music practices teach children to understand gender and gendered meanings and discriminatory categories such as race, ethnicity, sexuality, age and religion.

I have led two research projects funded by the Academy of Finland. The research project Construction of Gender in Children's Cultures (2008-2011) created understanding of gender and other related differences in children's cultures. The project questioned the myth of innocent childhood, according to which the child is beyond the political and cultural sphere, in a state of innocence. The project observed that the child is gendered from the very beginning and is in many ways directed to and by adults' cultural perceptions of sex/gender. 

The interdisciplinary project Localizing Feminist New Materialisms (2017-2021) studied feminist new materialist thinking in relation to ethnographic research methods. The research team (PI Taru Leppänen, researchers Anastasia Khodyreva, Katve-Kaisa Kontturi, Tara Mehrabi, Milla Tiainen) implemented new materialist theories by applying them to specific empirical contexts, such as children's music culture, performing arts, disability research, music and sound.

My co-edited book New Materialism and Intersectionality: Making Middles Matter (Routledge 2025, with Katve-Kaisa Kontturi, Tara Mehrabi and Milla Tiainen) advances the interplay of intersectionality theories and feminist new materialisms, arguing that co-constitutive influences between these fields will provide feminist and gender studies scholars with improved tools to analyse markers of difference and identity in 21st-century realities. This volume puts forward a concept of "the middle". It refers to the situation-bound mutual impact of material, social, human, and more-than-human elements in the formation of differences, identities, subject positions, and power relations. 

I am currently writing a monograph Politics of Feminist New Materialisms at Music Playschools: Musicking in the Middle (Routledge, forthcoming 2026). The book is based on ethnographic fieldwork in music playschool groups for babies, asylum seekers, deaf children and children with disabilities. This book focuses on the relationship between the politics of new materialisms and intersectionalities by looking at power relations in music playschools as both limiting and empowering forces.