Juha Suoranta

Who is Juha Suoranta?

Juha Suoranta is a Finnish educational researcher, and public intellectual. He is currently Professor in Adult Education at the University of Tampere. Previously he worked as Professor of Education at the University of Lapland, and Professor of Adult Education at the University of Joensuu. He is also Adjunct Professor in Music Education at the Sibelius Academy, Helsinki, and in media education at the University of Tampere. In sum he has published 33 books and umpteen scientific articles.

Suoranta has been a Visiting Scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1996-1997, and at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2003-2004. Suoranta has served as the Government of Finland/David and Nancy Speer Visiting Professor in Finnish Studies and Sociology at the University of Minnesota in 2005-2006.

In 2003 he acted as Senior Scientist in the Academy of Finland. He has also served as a short-term educational expert in Tanzania, and a consultant and author for the United Nations' World Youth Report 2003.

Suoranta has published extensively in the fields of education, political sociology of education, radical adult education, critical media education, and critical pedagogy belonging to the new, or second, generation of critical pedagogy scholars. In the latter area he has collaborated with Peter McLaren. In his writing Suoranta has been interested in bringing together ideas and material from various disciplines, including media and cultural studies, sociology, educational studies, literature studies and literature.