DMus, MTheol Samuli Korkalainen

DMus, MTheol Samuli Korkalainen is a music researcher, pastor, church musician and LGBTQIA+ activist as well as president of the Finnish Society for Hymnology and Liturgy. His doctoral dissertation on the history of church music concerned the standardisation of Lutheran congregational singing and liturgical melodies in nineteenth-century Finland and Ingria. The thesis represented a new kind of research perspective in the study of church music, as Korkalainen, for instance, approached his topic from the point of view of the social structure of the Finnish society, its hierarchies and their reorganisation.

Korkalainen has broad networks both in the Nordic countries and around the world. His ongoing postdoctoral research concerns the spiritual music of Finnish Americans from the nineteenth century onwards. The topic has not been studied before, and Korkalainen also approaches it from the social and political perspectives as well as from the point of view of gender studies. In addition, together with Doctor of Music Leena Lampinen, he has a research project that examines the experiences of church musicians during the COVID-19 pandemic, focusing on the Greatest Christmas Carols (‘Kauneimmat Joululaulut’) sing-along events.

Korkalainen is a church trustee of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and an active debater who has bravely brought up issues of equality and non-discrimination in the Church. He belongs to the so-called rainbow pastors, who keep wedding same-sex couples, even though the Church has not yet made an official decision on the matter.