Sanna Raninen

Sanna Raninen is a researcher of early music, specialising in the material and visual culture of music in Early Modern Europe.

Sanna is currently working on a research project Cultural History of Music Books in Post-Reformation Sweden: Making and Owning Songbooks of Liturgy and Devotion, funded by Vetenskapsrådet. The project conducts a comprehensive study on the culture of written and printed music in the first two centuries of post-Reformation Sweden and Finland, with major themes on book production, formats, dissemination, contents, and readership. The project emphasises the unique aspects of music and its sources as part of the Swedish Reformation and the adaptation of written music culture alongside the traditions based on local variants, oral transmission and memory.

Previously Sanna was a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the Finnish Literature Society, conducting a project funded by Kone Foundation on the material culture of music books in Post-Reformation Sweden. Her research on visual culture of music has particularly focussed on Italian art, as in years 2015–2017 she was a Research Associate for the the Leverhulme-funded project Music in the Art of Renaissance Italy at the University of Sheffield.

Sanna completed her PhD at the University of Manchester, as part of an Arts and Humanities Research Council UK -funded project Production and Reading of Music Sources 1480–1530, focussing on the production methods and use of printed sources of polyphony during the early sixteenth century.