Satu Miettinen is currently the Dean of the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland in Finland. She has been in this position since 2018. She is also a Professor of Service Design at the same university, a position she has held since 2016. Before that, from 2011 to 2016, she worked as a Professor of Applied Art and Design. Satu Miettinen is recognized as one of the pioneers in the field of service design. She has written some of the earliest books on this topic. She has supervised over a dozen doctoral theses on service design. She has also guided numerous Master’s theses on various aspects of design.

She has worked as an expert in different national committees. These include the Scientific Committee for the National Audit Office. There are also several committees at the Ministry of Finance for developing accessible services. She was part of the Steering committee for the Design Finland Program. This was at the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Employment. Satu Miettinen has also worked as a visiting professor at several universities. These include Stanford University in the USA, Tongji University in China, and the University of Trento in Italy.

Research work

She worked as the principal investigator in different projects. One of these was the Acting on the Margins: Arts as Social Sculpture (AMASS) project. It was funded by the European Commission Horizon 2020 Transformations -program (2020-2022). – The SeeYouth project, a global Trans-Atlantic Platform project funded by the Academy of Finland (2020-2021). – The Participatory Design with Youth (PARTY) project was funded by Horizon 2020 MSCA RISE between 2015 and 2019. It involved partners from South Africa, Namibia, Italy, and the UK. – There were several research projects. They were funded by Finnish Innovation Fund TEKES, currently Business Finland. These included HYMY (2008–2010), PALMU (2010–2011), Value from Emotion (2013–2014), and HumanSee (2015–2016). – Implementing the DIMECC N4S research program (2014-2017). – She led an artistic research project. It was called “Women living on the edges of the world.” This project was funded by the KONE Foundation (2016-2017). The project explores the margins and coping in extreme remote conditions through artistic work in Russia, Australia, and Lapland. She led the Business Finland-funded Empathy Business project 2023-24.

You can find her academic CV here.

Here is a link to her Routledge author profile.

Artistic work

Satu Miettinen is an active artist and designer. She works in the areas of art that engage with society. She also focuses on ecofeminist photography. She is a member of Artists’ Association MUU ry. This is a national art organisation in Finland. It is focused on new media art. She is also a member of the Photography and Media Art Association Valmed ry. She is also a member of professional designers organisation Ornamo as an industrial designer TKO. Satu was part of the National Committee of Diversity in Arts. She contributed at the National Arts Promotion Centre TAIKE from 2019 to 2022.

You can find her Instagram page here.

You can visit Margin to Margin vlog here.

You can find her vimeo account here.

Here you can download here CV in pdf -format: