Sanna Raninen

Sanna Raninen is a Researcher at Uppsala University's Department of Musicology specializing in Early Modern European music culture, with current projects examining post-Reformation Swedish music books and historical visual representations of music. Her institutional affiliations include ongoing research at Uppsala University and prior positions at the Finnish Literature Society and University of Sheffield.

Raninen earned her PhD from the University of Manchester through an Arts and Humanities Research Council UK-funded project analyzing 16th-century polyphonic music sources. Her educational trajectory reflects deep engagement with historical musicology methodologies and material culture studies.

Her research focuses on the material and visual dimensions of music in Early Modern Europe, particularly examining how music books functioned within post-Reformation Swedish and Finnish religious contexts. Key themes include book production techniques, manuscript adaptation practices, readership patterns, and the intersection of music with visual art in Renaissance Italy. This interdisciplinary approach bridges musicology, art history, and book history to reconstruct historical musical practices through physical artifacts.

Raninen's publication portfolio reveals consistent thematic concentration on music materiality across Scandinavia and Italy, with recent works analyzing parchment reuse in liturgical manuscripts, aging in musical iconography, and early music printing techniques. Her scholarship demonstrates growing methodological sophistication in connecting physical book features to cultural and religious practices.

Research funding includes major grants from Vetenskapsrådet (Swedish Research Council) for her current project on post-Reformation songbooks, Kone Foundation support for Finnish Literature Society research, and Leverhulme Trust funding for the 'Music in the Art of Renaissance Italy' initiative at University of Sheffield. She has collaborated extensively on international projects examining music sources from 1480-1530.

Raninen leads Uppsala University's comprehensive study on post-Reformation Swedish music books, investigating how written and printed music adapted alongside oral traditions during Sweden's religious transformation. This project examines production methods, physical formats, dissemination networks, and user interactions with musical texts across two centuries of cultural change.