Meet Our Lecturers
Course Leader and International Relations lecturer
Juho Ahava, PhD
PhD in Film Studies.
University of Iowa, USA
Dr Juho Ahava, originally from Finland, has lived and worked in several different countries and cultures, including Cambodia and Hong Kong. He joined MIUC in the spring of 2016, after spending five years at the University of Iowa, US, where he graduated with a PhD in Film Studies. Before that, he earned his MA and BA degrees in History from the University of Oulu, Finland.
For his thesis on the Cambodian Civil War, he did research in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, while concurrently working in the public affairs section of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal.
Dr Juho Ahava is enthusiastic about bringing his teaching experience and professional knowledge to MIUC and working with motivated students from diverse cultural backgrounds. While honouring his administrative and teaching commitments at MIUC, he will continue his research and writing articles on politics and various forms of media.
Research and Professional Activities
1. Publications
– Ahava, Juho 2012: “Kolme näkökulmaa Kambodžhan tragediaan – Rithy Panhin
Riisipeltojen ihmiset, Eräänä iltana sodan jälkeen ja Rantapato elokuvallisena
historiankirjoituksena.” (”Three Approaches to the Cambodian Tragedy – Rithy
Panh’s Rice People, One Evening After the War, and The Sea Wall as Filmic
Writing of History”) in Kambodža – Historia ja kulttuuri. (Cambodia – History and
Culture). Lapland University Press 2012. (in Finnish)
– Ahava, Juho. “Lev Kuleshov and the Ontology of Silent Cinema.” PhD
Dissertation. University of Iowa, 2020. DOI: https://doi.org/10.17077/etd.005696
2. Conferences
– “John Sayles and Writing People’s History on the Silver Screen.” Society of
Cinema and Media Studies annual conference. Boston, March 2024.
– “Lev Kuleshov’s Material Realism.” Society of Cinema and Media Studies annual
conference. Denver, April 2023.
– “Montage Existentialism – Lev Kuleshov’s By the Law and the Crisis of Cinematic
Formalism.” Society of Cinema and Media Studies annual conference. Chicago,
April 2022.
– “The Platonic Tradition in the Ontology of Film from Kuleshov and Bazin to the
Post-Digital Era.” European Network for Cinema and Media Studies Conference.
Gdansk, June 2019.
– “Montage Spectator: Lev Kuleshov on Film and Its Viewer.” European Network for
Cinema and Media Studies Conference. Amsterdam, June 2018.
– “Narrativizing Inaction: John Sayles’s Matewan as a Counterhegemonic History
Film.” NECS Graduate Workshop. Utrecht, June 2018.
– “Lev Kuleshov&Early Cinephilia and Anti-cinephilia.” Society of Cinema and
Media Studies annual conference. Montreal, March 2015.
– “Subversive Strangeness: Boris’s Death Scene in The Cranes are Flying.”
University of Iowa World Languages Graduate Organization annual conference.
Iowa City, April 2014.
3. Workshops
– University of Cádiz International Summer School (ISS): Political communication,
artificial intelligence and social media: Global strategies and digital narratives,
Jerez de la Frontera, July 2026. “Visual Communication, Rhetoric and Identity.”
(Invited Lecture)
4. Achievements
– Teaching Excellence Award, AY2024-25, MA International Relations. Marbella
International University Centre.
– The prize for the best Bachelor& thesis of the year, 2006. Department of History,
University of Oulu.
