Eeva Leinonen

Eeva Kaarina Leinonen ([ˈe̞ːʋɑ ˈle̞i̯no̞ne̞n]; born 1958; sometimes Eeva Kaarina Leinonen-Davies) is a Finnish educator and educational administrator. Since 1 October 2021, she has been president of Maynooth University in Ireland, having previously headed Murdoch University in Australia.

Leinonen was announced on International Women's Day, in March 2021, as the successor to Philip Nolan as president of Maynooth University, County Kildare, Ireland. She served at Murdoch University for another six months, taking office at Maynooth on 1 October 2021. She became the first female leader of the university, and the third woman to take the full leadership role of an Irish university in the span of under 15 months - an interim appointment at the University of Limerick mid-2020 was followed by the selection of Maggie Cusack to lead the newly-formed Munster Technological University from 1 January 2021, the election of Linda Doyle at Trinity College Dublin, effective 1 August - and Leinonen's commencement was followed a week later by the full appointment of Kerstin Mey as head of the University of Limerick.

Leinonen was awarded an honorary degree, D.Sc. (H.C.), for her services to education, by one of her almae matres, Aston University, in 2018.

Leinonen was the first female head of Murdoch University, established in 1973 as the second State university of Western Australia. She took office on 4 April 2016, with the formal investiture, presided over by the Governor of Western Australia, held later in the year. In 2018, her salary, for a university of around 23,000 students, 750 academics and 999 general staff was noted in the press as, at 755,000 Australian dollars, higher than that of Australia’s Prime Minister; the salary rose to 930,000 AUD by 2019, even as staff cuts (the main union feared at least 200 job losses) and a 25 million AUD salary saving were sought.

In 2012, Leinonen moved to Australia, going directly from King's to the wide campus of the University of Wollongong in New South Wales, 80 km from Sydney, where she took up a role as deputy vice-chancellor, with overall responsibility for education. Succeeding a 42-year veteran academic leader, and joining a new vice-chancellor, Paul Wellings, Leinonen outlined plans to work on student university life, digital learning and community outreach and participation. From April 2016, she moved to become vice-chancellor, the chief officer, of Murdoch University in Perth, Western Australia, after the previous vice-chancellor, Richard Higgott, had departed in October 2014 in controversial circumstances, to be replaced by an acting head, Andrew Taggart, from 2014 to 2016.

Having started teaching and research at Hatfield Polytechnic in the late 1980s, by the 2000s, Leinonen was Professor of Psycholinguistics at what had become in 1992 the University of Hertfordshire; she was also appointed as deputy vice-chancellor there. For part of the same period, she was a private docent - a scholar with the equivalent of two doctoral theses - at the University of Oulu in Finland, working with clinical linguistics. In September 2009, after almost 20 years at Hertfordshire, she joined the faculty at King's College London, where she was Professor of Clinical Linguistics, and was also appointed vice-principal for education, and deputy chairperson of the Academic Board.

Leinonen was born in 1958 in Oulu, Finland, one of three children of working-class parents. She and her brothers grew, and attended school, there, though she did take a year in Michigan as an exchange student. She pursued higher education, the first in her family's history to do so, opting for UK institutions; she commented later on the challenges involved in studying in a different linguistic environment. She took her bachelor's degree, a B.Sc. in Linguistics and Psychology, at Aston University in Birmingham, followed by an M.Phil. at the University of Exeter; her dissertation, released in 1984, considered, as part of a textual analysis approach, the experience of Finnish learners of English. She then joined the research team of Professor Pamela Grunwell, a specialist in Clinical Linguistics and Phonology at Leicester Polytechnic (later De Montfort University). She pursued a Ph.D. in Clinical Linguistics and her thesis, published in 1987, explored the phonological systems of children.