Esko Paakkola, Doctor of Education, who retired from the position of Director of the Aducate centre at the University of Eastern Finland’s in 2013, died in Helsinki on Midsummer’s Eve, 19 June 2020, after fighting a serious illness. He was 70 years old. Esko was born in Rovaniemi 06 May 1950, spent his childhood and youth in Rovaniemi and studied philosophy at the University of Jyväskylä in the early 1970s. After graduating with a master’s degree, he also completed a class teacher degree in 1978. Paakkola defended his doctoral dissertation at the University of Joensuu in 2007 on the topic of “Self-education – the pursuit of an ideal and virtuous life. Western and Confucian perspective“. 

In 1977–1985, Paakkola worked at Joensuu University in teaching, design and research positions. From 1985 to 1996, he was the executive director of the critical non-governmental cultural organisation Critical University, partly funded by the Finnish Ministry of Education. Before returning to the University of Joensuu, Paakkola worked as a teacher for immigrant students in Kirkkonummi. From autumn of 1997, he led as Director the Continuing Education Center of the University of Joensuu, which was named Aducate when the University of Eastern Finland was founded, a combination of the words adult and educate. Paakkola had numerous positions of trust from international to local.

In the eucen community he was a beloved and respected member. He organised a eucen international conference in 1999 “Changing work and educational needs” with great success and joined the Steering Committe of eucen as Vice-President in the period 2010-2012.

Retired Paakkola became interested in work community mediation and completed an expert degree in the field. Through Arator, a publishing company founded with the philosopher Kari E. Turunen, Paakkola participated in the social debate from an open-minded perspective by writing and publishing non-fiction and textbooks produced by others.

Esko Paakkola was humane, open-minded and optimist, and had a fine sense of humour. In his free time, he played drums in the blues band he founded and played basketball at the Tuesday Club in Joensuu, and later also in Kujajanokka’s Tujaus. We will all miss him dearly.