Grand Prize of the Finnish Cultural Foundation awarded to Veli-Pekka Lehtola
Veli-Pekka Lehtola’s academic career is international and multifaceted, and the number of his scholarly publications is remarkable. He is known as a highly interdisciplinary researcher and an accomplished lecturer. Throughout his career, he has focused on Sámi and Lapland history as well as contemporary Sámi art. Over the years, he has published more than a hundred scientific articles.
Lehtola served as Professor of Sámi Culture at the University of Oulu from 2005 to 2023 and as Director of the Giellagas Institute from 2005 to 2007.
He has written several award-winning works on the relationship between Sámi people and Finns and its history. His 2025 book Kenen maa, kenen ääni? Saamelaisten ja suomalaisten suhteet esihistoriasta nykypäivään (“Whose Land, Whose Voice? Relations Between Sámi and Finns from Prehistory to the Present”) is a comprehensive foundational work on Sámi history and the development of Sámi–Finnish relations. The book is a companion to his 2022 publication Entiset elävät meissä (“The Past Lives in Us”), which examines Sámi understandings of their own history.
Lehtola has also authored numerous other non-fiction books and biographies.
As a member of the working group, Lehtola contributed to the script of the cultural section of the current main exhibition Enâmeh láá mii párnááh – These Lands Are Our Children at the Sámi Museum Siida. Opened in 2022, the exhibition at the Sámi Museum and Nature Centre Siida has been highly successful. In 2024, Siida was awarded both Finland’s Museum of the Year and the European Museum of the Year, and it has broken visitor records for several consecutive years.
Among the three award themes, Lehtola represents the “Whole Finland” category. The other Grand Prize recipients are writer and theatre director Juha Hurme and physicist Nanna Myllys.
The Finnish Cultural Foundation annually awards three prizes of 40,000 euros for contributions to science, art, and culture. The recipients are among the most compelling researchers, artists, and cultural figures in their fields, individuals who build a sustainable, diverse, and multi-voiced Finland, strengthen the role of science and the arts in society, or represent future-leading innovators reshaping science and art.