Dr. Minna Valjakka is an art historian focusing on various forms of urban creativity (such as street art, interventions, performances, and sound art) in relation to public spaces and civil society formation in East and Southeast Asian cities.

Through locally-embedded, long-term research at the intersection of art studies, urban studies and environmental humanities, she examines urban creativity as a response to the distinctive trajectories of environmental crisis, geopolitical circumstances, developments in arts and cultural policies, and translocal mediations. She is a passionate researcher and has pursued to develop a multi-sited and comparative research through many years of ethnographic fieldwork and archival research in numerous locations. She has held a number of research fellowships and projects that have taken her to more than twenty cities across the region.

Minna is currently a researcher and associate professor of art history at the University of Helsinki, Finland. She is building up a new interdisciplinary research project on environmentally engaged art and its responsibilities on an intercontinental scale, a spin-off from her previous project Shades of Green, funded by the Research Council of Finland (2022-2021). Before returning to Helsinki, she was a full professor of contemporary art history and theory in a global perspective at Leiden University (2022-2023). Minna also holds a Title of Docent (habilitation) in East Asian Studies, specifically Urban Studies at the University of Turku.

Minna has published extensively, including journal articles and special issues in Critical Asian Studies, Cultural Studies, City, Culture and Society, Urban Design International, and China Information, among others. She has also written book chapters, exhibition essays, and co-edited volumes, such as Visual Arts, Representations, and Interventions in Contemporary China. Urbanized Interface (AUP, 2018) and the award winning Enemmän kuin Puoli Taivasta [More than Half the Sky] in Finnish (Art House, 2016). Besides her academic work, she also collaborates with art spaces and museums in terms of research, exhibitions, and events.