Hanna Backer Johnsen

Hanna Backer Johnsen is a Doctoral Researcher at the Doctoral School of Music Education, Jazz, and Folk Music at the Sibelius Academy, University of the Arts Helsinki in Finland. Her doctoral dissertation focuses on social justice in music education, explored through the Floora project in Finland—a social innovation within the music school system that aims to include children and young people from diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Her study is grounded in the belief that research on music schools should increasingly prioritize the voices and experiences of children and young people, to counterbalance the traditional emphasis on teachers and pedagogy. Her research will contribute to the knowledge gap by adding the perspectives of young people and their parents/guardians as significant agents of music schools as well as contributors to the wider understandings of policy level processes in the Basic Education in the Arts music system in Finland and in music education in general.