About The Speaker
Prof. Dr. Tomi Mäkelä
After studying piano and education in Finland, Tomi Mäkelä continued his piano studies at the University of Music and Performing Arts in Vienna. He began studying music at the university at the same time. After completing his doctorate at the Technical University of Berlin, he was awarded Facultas Docendi in Helsinki and became senior assistant and honorary lecturer for history and aesthetics of the performing arts at the Sibelius Academy. Interim professorships, a project position at the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters and a practical phase as music critic, radio author and producer were followed by working on the DFG project “Musik in der Emigration 1933-1945”. He then served as interim professor for the VW endowed professorship “Music in the 20th century and new media” in Cologne for one year. In 1996, he was appointed to the Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg. He was a guest professor at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris in 2006 and later at the University of Bergen in Norway. In 2008, he received the “Geisteswissenschaften International” award for “Poesie in der Luft” about Jean Sibelius, which was translated into English in 2011. He has served as professor at Martin Luther University Halle- Wittenberg since 2009. Currently, Mäkelä is conducting research on Northern European musical cultures, European educational history, and film music diegesis.