Personal Info
- Country of residence: Netherlands
Information
Umayya Abu-Hanna is a Palestinian Finnish writer
Born in Haifa in 1961, Abu-Hanna moved to Finland in 1981.
Abu-Hanna was a member of the Helsinki City Council and member of its Real Estate Board. In the cultural policy field, she was a member of the Arts Council Finland where she wrote its first draft on diversity and chaired its Multicultural board. Umayya was a member of multiple committees in different Finnish ministries including the Ministry of Finance, Education and Culture.
Abu-Hanna graduated from Aalto University in Audio-visual Journalism and was the first journalist ‘of color’ presenting the current-affairs TV-program at the Finnish Broadcasting Company. Abu-Hanna headed the department of Media at the University of Applied Sciences. Soon after she was a member of the Research Department at the Finnish National Gallery. In the print media, she was a regular columnist for Finnair’s in-flight magazine ‘Blue Wings’ and the main Finnish paper ‘Helsingin Sanomat’ in addition to multiple other media. Abu-Hanna is a well-known public figure relating to questions of ethics, identity and globalization. Her books in Finnish are both non-fiction and fiction.
After 30 years in Finland, Abu-Hanna moved to Amsterdam at the end of 2010 where she co-founded ‘Rethink Amsterdam’ Foundation. Before her work at Rethink, she was the Netherlands’ advisor for the Finnish Cultural Institute for the Benelux and senior adviser for CIE ‘Centre for International Heritage Activities’ in Leiden.
Abu-Hanna is a cultural broker and agent for some Arab cultural thinkers and artists. In addition to her mother tongue Arabic, she is fluent in Hebrew, English and Finnish, and is working on her Dutch.
Achievements and Awards
"The Global Family Award", for civic courage 2013
"Larin Paraske award" for excellence in spoken word. The Kalevala Women’s Association 2008
"Finn of the Year" The Finnish Civic Society 2004
"Kristiina of the year 2004", Christina Institute for gender studies, University of Helsinki
"Finland Award 2003", Finnish Ministry of Education
"Bonnier grand journalist award" best journalistic innovation of the year 2002
- Years in active
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