Sessions
The deadline for the submission of session proposals was Friday 29th May 2026. Decisions on the acceptance of session proposals were communicated by 30 June 2026.
Sessions for the 2026 YHYS Fall Colloquium are listed here in alphabetical order. The Call for Abstracts opens Friday 14.8.2026. All submissions for sessions should be sent to the corresponding convenors by Tuesday 15th September.
The timetables for sessions will be communicated on the Program page.
How to increase collaboration among the environmental social science community and boost societal relevance and uptake of our research?
Convenors:Lasse Peltonen (University of Eastern Finland)
Eeva Berglund (Aalto University)
Tracy Hruska (University of Oulu)
Given the current state of the world, the need for environmental social science (ESS) is arguably greater than ever. But does the societal and policy relevance of ESS – and the capacity of the ESS community – match this challenge?
Following an inspirational keynote presentation at the 2025 YHYS Colloquium by Patrick Devine-Wright about the UK-based ACCESS project to better connect policy making, social science, and social scientists (in and out of academia, see: https://accessnetwork.uk/about-access/), the YHYS Board began discussing how to launch a similar initiative for environmental social scientists in Finland. The aims of this effort would be to enhance the capacity of the environmental social science (ESS) community to work better together; to identify important research gaps in the field, and to increase the policy and societal relevance of environmental social scientists and their research.
In this Plenary Brainstorm session, the YHYS Board wants to know if there is an interest among environmental social science for such ESS capacity-building actions – and what role YHYS could play here. Members of the Board have thus far identified potential actions to pursue in the coming year, as well as some possible funding sources for parts of this work. We want to hear from more people about what our priorities should be for action and what other initiatives we can link to. We will begin this session with a brief overview of the UK’s ACCESS project and the Board’s initial ideas on the topic. We will then engage the Colloquium plenary to brainstorm and prioritize capacity-building actions that we could collectively pursue in 2027.
Apply to session
No application required. This plenary session is a part of the main program of YHYS 2026.
Questions regarding the session can be addressed to corresponding convenor Lasse Peltonen (lasse.peltonen@uef.fi).
Einat Amir-Ahola (Åbo Akademi University)
Anna Törnroos-Remes (Åbo Akademi University)
Interdisciplinary collaboration is increasingly positioned as essential for addressing complex sustainability challenges, from biodiversity loss and climate change to environmental governance and social transformation. Yet despite widespread agreement on the importance of interdisciplinarity, collaboration across disciplinary and methodological boundaries often remains difficult in practice. Environmental research frequently brings together researchers from diverse fields with different epistemic assumptions, temporalities, methods, forms of evidence, and expectations regarding what constitutes useful knowledge.
While sustainability research often examines engagement and knowledge co-production among researchers, policymakers, stakeholders, and citizens, this session turns attention inward to the interdisciplinary research community itself. It invites contributions examining epistemic frictions and bridging methods in interdisciplinary sustainability research: moments where different disciplinary epistemic cultures encounter tension, misunderstanding, and negotiation, as well as the conditions under which such encounters may become productive forms of exchange and knowledge integration. Drawing on STS, Team Science, and scholarship on interdisciplinary sustainability research, the session approaches collaboration not as a stable ideal but as an ongoing process of coordination across epistemic differences, shaped by epistemic cultures, boundary objects, temporalities, and institutional conditions.
We welcome contributions addressing questions such as: What counts as valid environmental knowledge across disciplinary settings, and what can be done to overcome challenges? How are standards of evidence, usefulness, and legitimacy negotiated? How do differing temporalities, methods, and expectations shape collaboration? What roles do facilitation, mediation, boundary objects, or shared practices play in disciplinary translation and epistemic coordination? How do asymmetries of power, funding, disciplinary prestige, and institutional incentives shape possibilities for reciprocal epistemic exchange?
The session welcomes empirical, methodological, and theoretical contributions from environmental social sciences, STS, sustainability studies, environmental humanities, marine studies, governance research, and related fields. We particularly encourage papers that critically reflect on interdisciplinary practice, including tensions, overlooked challenges, and experimental approaches to bridging epistemic differences, rather than accounts focused solely on success. We are especially interested in how interdisciplinary communities develop shared practices and interactional expertise over time, and in relational, institutional, and methodological infrastructures that support or constrain this process.
The session will consist of individual paper presentations followed by a moderated collective discussion focused on connections across the cases, recurring epistemic challenges, and transferable bridging practices.
- Anna Törnroos and Einat Amir-Ahola (in person), Nina Tynkkynen:
Navigating the Epistemic Sea of Interdisciplinary Sustainability Research: Lessons from the Centre for Sustainable Ocean Science - Mirjami Lantto Klein (in person), Alexandra Malmström, Mia Pihlajamäki, Marko Keskinen, Elizabeth Carter, Selen Eren, Jon Cranko Page, Pyry Kettunen, Simo Sarkki, Darrell Tang, Omer Abubaker, Lauri Ahopelto, Pertti Ala-Aho, Anna Autio, Marijke de Vet, Nora Fagerholm, Mohammad Imangholiloo, Ashvath Kunadi, Kseniia Kortunova, Xiao Lu, Hannu Marttila, Mourad Oussalah, Anna-Kaisa Ronkainen, Eliisa Lotsari:
To Twin or not to Twin? Navigating Epistemic Plurality in Developing Water Sector Digital Twins - Selen Eren (in person), Anna W. M. Heerdink, Joseph Gent, Aminah Al-Attas Bradford, Mwazvita T. B. Dalu, Michiel P. Veldhuis, Anne Beaulieu, Luuk Siewers, Frederic Lens, Roderick W. Bouman, Gerard E. Breeman, Ana M. Delgado, F. Barona-Gomez, David Ehrhardt, Cornelia E. Nauen, Carol X. Garzon-Lopez, Renske E. Onstein, Angelica Cibrian Jaramillo, Margaret Gold, Yali Si, Roy P. Remme, Kathryn A. Stewart:
From nested to relational scales: identifying and addressing scale mismatches in transdisciplinary socio-environmental research and governance - Laura S. Tuominen, Mikael Puurtinen, Teea Kortetmäki:
JYU.Wisdom: How to build an interdisciplinary sustainability research community - David Schlosberg:
Reflection on 13 years of establishing and directing a university-wide multidisciplinary environment institute - Suvi Vikström, Aleksi Mikola, Heli Saarikoski:
Knowledge co-production in contested environmental governance: the cormorant-fishing conflict - Ramcilovic-Suominen Sabaheta:
Who Gets to Imagine Bioeconomy Transformation? Epistemic Authority and the Containment of Alternatives in Europe - Salovaara, Janne J. and Ratvio, Rami:
Empirical Frictions in the Foundations and Aims of Transformative Sustainability Science
Anni Piiroinen (University of Oulu)
Emilia Laine (University of Helsinki)
Food systems face intensifying pressures to transform, as ecological crises and geopolitical instability intersect with persistent concerns over producer livelihoods. Yet the pathways to transformation remain deeply contested: actors ranging from farmers and agri-food companies to researchers and policymakers hold divergent, and unevenly legitimised, visions of what a sustainable food system looks like.
This session invites contributions examining the contested imaginaries, narratives, and ways of knowing that shape Finnish food system futures. Whose visions gain visibility and institutional resonance, and whose are marginalised? What tensions emerge between, for example, productivist efficiency logics and place-based food cultures, or market-driven sustainability and redistributive food politics? What ways of producing and consuming food are legitimised, problematised or ignored by different actors?
We are equally interested in the reflexive questions this raises for researchers: What is our responsibility and capacity to contribute to food system transformation? How can we take our research beyond critique to support the efforts of sustainable farmers and other key actors? We welcome contributions engaging with food system transformation from, but not limited to, the fields of rural studies, science and technology studies, political ecology, sustainability science and sociology.
Instead of a conventional session format, the presenters are invited to share their observations, arguments and provocations in a condensed 10-minute presentation that is built around a) one slide including a single image, graph, or diagram, or b) a physical object of their choosing.
Presentations are followed by a fishbowl conversation where presenters as well as audience members can delve deeper into the topics raised. The purpose of this format is to give enough space for dialogue and shared reflection about where the Finnish food system currently stands and what alternative futures lie ahead.
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Session I
- Anna Norberg (University of Helsinki):
Redesigning animal source food production systems for ecological sustainability in Finland — balancing production and environmental impact - Annika Lonkila (Finnish Environment Institute) & Minna Kaljonen (Finnish Environment Institute):
Moving beyond cognitive lock-ins: Discursive openings for more sustainable livestock systems - Saana Hokkanen (University of Helsinki):
Knowing familial soils - Anni Piiroinen (University of Oulu):
What is a field for? Hopes and challenges of cover cropping - Riikka Aro (University of Jyväskylä):
Future-making through grassroot food citizenship practices in and beyond gardens - Sanna Luoto (Tampere University of Applied Sciences):
Modes of Urban Food Prosumerism: Practices and Actors for Sustainable Food Futures - Vera Kauppinen (University of Jyväskylä):
Restructuring of food aid in Finland: Expectations and outcomes - Emilia Laine (University of Helsinki):
From foods to ingredients, from disruption to co-existence: Establishing cellular agriculture in Finland
Session II
Paul Arteaga (LUT University)
Mashiur Rahman (JYU)
This session examines how European societies respond to overlapping environmental, democratic and security crises through the lens of the EU’s twin transition (simultaneous green and digital transitions). It takes the European Green Deal, the EU Digital Strategy, multilevel governance and digitalised energy systems as starting points to open a broader discussion on how sustainable futures are imagined, governed and contested in Europe. The session foregrounds the tensions between policy narratives that present digitalisation and green transition as mutually reinforcing and the complex realities of data governance, energy security, platformisation and institutional trust in practice. It focuses on how sustainability futures are made credible, governable and actionable, and how they are challenged by political contestation, uneven trust in institutions and the material consequences of digitalisation.
We invite contributions that critically examine intersections between digitalisation, energy systems and green transition, and analyse how policy documents, institutional narratives, expert knowledge and socio technical imaginaries construct sustainable futures and are translated into national, regional and local implementation. Papers may also explore tensions, misalignments and contradictions between EU level principles and concrete case studies, including questions of policy ownership, deliberation, data security, public trust, institutional responsibility and geopolitical risk.
We invite individual paper proposals based on abstracts of no more than 250 words. Submissions may offer theoretical, empirical, or methodological contributions, provided that they engage directly with the session’s central themes.. We welcome papers that:
• Critically analyse the intersections between digitalisation, energy systems, and the green transition in European, national, regional, or local contexts;
• Examine policy documents, institutional narratives, expert knowledge, or socio-technical imaginaries related to the European Green Deal, the EU Digital Strategy, or digitalised energy systems;
• Investigate governance gaps, contradictions, or tensions between EU-level objectives and their implementation, including policy ownership, deliberation, data security, public trust, institutional responsibility, and geopolitics; or
• Contribute to environmental social science, energy-transition research, digitalisation studies, governance and policy analysis, critical data studies, science and technology studies, or socio-technical transition research
Researchers and advanced practitioners working on environmental governance, energy transitions, digitalisation, public policy, critical data studies, science and technology studies, and socio technical transitions, particularly in European and Nordic/Baltic contexts.
This will be a 90-minute paper-presentation session. The session will normally include up to six presentations. Each presenter will be allocated approximately 15 minutes: 10 minutes for the presentation and 5 minutes for questions and discussion. The convenors may adjust the precise allocation of time depending on the final number of accepted papers.
- Topi Turunen (Finnish Environment Institute):
Circular Economy of Consumer Electronics: Analysing the Legal Barriers and Enablers of Their Life Cycle Extension
Other authors: Laura Sokka (Finnish Environment Institute), Tero Heinonen (Finnish Environment Institute), Jàchym Judl (Finnish Environment Institute), Anssi Lintulampi (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), Winnie Ruismäki (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), Veera Marttila (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland), Minna Räikkönen (VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland) - Lotta Staffans (LUT University):
Finnish energy flowing into international investment portfolios - Sarah Tornberg (University of Jyväskylä):
From oil to renewable fuels: union strategies and just transition for oil refinery workers in Finland? - Hanna Entsalo (Finnish Environment Institute Syke):
(Mis)matched objectives: Competitiveness, security, and environmental sustainability in Finnish and Dutch innovation policies
Other authors: Matthijs Janssen (Finnish Environment Institute Syke), Paula Kivimaa (University of Utrecht) - Zifan Yang (Radboud University, University of Chinese Academy of Social Sciences):
Contested Green Politics in the 10th European Parliament: The Conditional Influence of the Radical Right - Conor Shaw (LUT University):
Beyond Technical Solutions: Tensions in Digitalising Environmental Governance - Minna K. Havukainen (LUT University):
Future-oriented Social Life Cycle Assessment of Green Hydrogen production - Ratih D. Adiputri (University of Jyväskylä):
EU Imagined Sustainable Future from critical minerals perspective - Md Mashiur Rahman (University of Jyväskylä):
Mapping Out the Structural Gaps in Multi-Level Governance for the EU’s Twin Transitions - Paul Arteaga (LUT University):
Governing Energy Data in Practice: The Case of Fingrid Data Hub
Other authors: Rodrigo Santaella Goncalves (State University of Ceará), Matti Kojo (LUT University), Edemilson Parana (LUT University – University College Dublin)
Outi Pitkänen (University of Helsinki)
Kaisa Matschoss (University of Helsinki)
Sini Numminen (Aalto University)
Suvi Silfvenius (University of Helsinki)
The need for system transitions that make life on the planet more sustainable has become increasingly evident as today’s societies are facing resource scarcity, battling the consequences of extreme weather events and struggling with dependence on fossil fuels and related geopolitics. In the field of energy, some progress has been made as European societies have increased the share of renewable energy sources and more consumption has been electrified to make use of renewable energy.
However, the worry that sustainability transitions have not been thought through from the just transitions perspective has grown as sustainability transitions have progressed (Abrams et al., 2022). The concern is that unless inequalities are addressed, system transitions make already disadvantaged households worse off by increasing their pre-existing burden. Scholars have noted that this is partly because plans for sustainability transitions do not take the needs of more disadvantaged groups into account (Tarasova & Rohracher, 2023). If transitions are facilitated mainly by solving problems related to uptake of technologies that only wealthier parts of the population can afford, transitions end up being exclusionary. Therefore, action needs to be taken to adapt sustainability transition policies and innovation processes to the needs of more diverse groups, including vulnerable households (Solbu et al., 2024).
In this session, we want to foster exchanges between researchers who strive to understand the relationship between disadvantaged groups and ongoing sustainability transitions. We welcome scholarly work that either unpacks the agency of disadvantaged households or the structural injustices that they already face or analyzes how vulnerabilities may be aggravated by ongoing sustainability transitions. Alternatively, submissions can either address how transition narratives portray vulnerable groups or provide insights on good practices for more inclusive transitions and ways to support disadvantaged groups through transitions.
Abram, S., Atkins, E., Dietzel, A., Jenkins, K., Kiamba, L., Kirshner, J., Kreienkamp, J., Parkhill, K., Pegram, T., & Santos Ayllón, L. M. (2022). Just Transition: A whole-systems approach to decarbonisation. Climate Policy, 22(8), 1033–1049. https://doi.org/10.1080/14693062.2022.2108365
Solbu, G., Ryghaug, M., Skjølsvold, T. M., Heidenreich, S., & Næss, R. (2024). Deep experiments for deep transitions – low-income households as sites of participation and socio-technical change in new energy systems. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 22(8), 52, 100865. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2024.100865
Tarasova, E., & Rohracher, H. (2023). Marginalising household users in smart grids. Technology in Society. 72, 102185. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2022.102185
- Jenni Viitala (Aalto University), Outi Pitkänen (UH), Sini Numminen (Aalto University), Kaisa Matschoss (UH):
Energy poverty and energy agency in the Finnish rental sector - Elina Turunen (UH) and Anna-Maria Isola (UEF):
Thoughts on ecological choices and experiences in poverty - Sini Numminen (Aalto University), Tuija Kajoskoski (UH), Tuuli Hirvilammi (Tampere University), Eija Valkealahti (Aalto University):
Heating, eating and car-driving during economically hard times. How did vulnerable households save in consumption during the energy crisis in 2022 in Finland? - Sam Grönholm, Taina Lahtinen, Jean Claude Mutiganda (Åbo Akademi University, ÅAU):
Promoting social equity budgeting to enhance sustainability transitions
Laura Puumala (University of Turku)
Juha Mäkinen (National Defence University of Finland)
Raisa Foster (Taideyliopisto & Itä-Suomen yliopisto)
Teemu Mäki (Taideyliopiston Tutkimusinstituutti)
This session invites academic presentations on philosophical, ethical, social and political issues concerning environmental security, environmental wars and green militarization. Environmental security has emerged as a growing topic in academic, political and public discussions alike as anthropogenic environmental harms seriously endanger human, environmental and climate security.
By 2070 3.5 billion people will live outside the ‘human climate niche’, and according to the ‘1,000-ton-rule’, burning fossil carbon leads to one billion premature human deaths by 2100. Relevant discussions include exploring the relation between human, political and environmental or climate security, climate justice and environmental security as an ethical, societal and political concern. Contributions may explore anthropogenic environmental hazards intelligible as just causes for environmental war, environmental harms causing and escalating conflicts to armed violence, and environmental insecurity as an incentive to weaponize the environment as part of the war politics. Suitable topics may also explore the possibility of militarized climate action, and the deployment of geoengineering methods as a form of self- or planetary defense against climate change. We encourage critical and improving academic analysis on these and other related ideas.
Please send your paper proposal (abstract of max. 250 words) to the corresponding convenor Laura Puumala lamakou@utu.fi by 15 September 2026. Please note, due to issues with the previously included e-mail address “info@environmentalwar.fi” it has been changed. All submissions should be sent to lamakou@utu.fi.
Your submission should present the field, methods and main research questions used and addressed in your presentation.
Each presentation is allocated approximately 15 minutes and PowerPoint or other visual aids for the presentations are encouraged.
Nina Janasik (University of Helsinki)
Maija Nikkanen (University of Helsinki)
Tuuli Parviainen (University of Helsinki)
Reetta Mietola (University of Helsinki)
Pauliina Tomberg (University of Helsinki)
Antti Sukura (University of Helsinki)
Heli Nordgren (University of Helsinki)
Tuure Tammi (University of Oulu)
Helinä Ääri (University of Oulu)
Janne Hukkinen (BIOS)
Paavo Järvensivu (BIOS)
This session explores ways to update thinking of crisis preparedness in times of polycrisis, with a special focus on food security and the protein transition, i.e. rebalancing between animal and alternative proteins in diets. The world’s social-ecological-technological conditions are changing, as reflected by the increasing popularity of the term polycrisis. This calls for a corresponding shift in our thinking. This session delves into the question of what the demand of updating the thinking of crisis preparedness in times of polycrisis could mean in the context of the protein transition. The context of the protein transition is particularly well-suited for the exploration of this question due to its highly multidimensional and interdisciplinary nature. There is evidence that the application and progress of the notion are hampered by high levels of uncertainty, diverse and often conflicting narratives among stakeholders, with the isolation of the underlying scientific evidence for those narratives nurturing a growing polarization of collective imaginations of protein safety and resilience. How can we update our thinking on food crisis preparedness given this multi-voiced and potentially fragmented setting?
To explore this further, we will organize a so-called Industrial Foresight Studio (IFS) exercise, aimed at all conference participants interested in food security exercises. The workshop explores realistic pathways for protein transition that ensure long-term resilience of the food production system.
The session is organized as part of False Sense of Protein Safety to Protein Resilience: Building Bridges for Protein Sustainability (ResPro) research project funded by Maj and Tor Nessling foundation (2026-2027).
Instead of abstracts, we invite interested participants to submit a short text (max. 250 words) describing how the exercise topic relates to their work (for example, conducting research on food systems, societal tensions, or participatory methodologies), how they would contribute to the exercise, and what they hope to gain from participating.
Send your proposal (max. 250 words) to the corresponding convenor Nina Janasik (nina.janasik@helsinki.fi) by 15 September 2026.
Tanja Niemi (University of Jyväskylä)
Kaisa Kurki (LUT University, University of Helsinki)
Tarian Cai Jenkins (University of Turku)
Janna Jokela (University of Turku)
The ways we imagine our futures quietly shape the horizon of our efforts. Research in environmental social sciences has demonstrated that dominant imaginaries, paradigmatic assumptions, and future visions play a central role in stabilising or challenging the environmental status quo (e.g., Inayatullah, 2008; Milkoreit, 2017; Jasanoff & Kim 2019). However, there is persistent challenge of translating insights from imaginaries and futures research into concrete and collective pathways for action (e.g., Stirling, 2015; Pereira et al., 2019).
This solutions-oriented session addresses this challenge by exploring how insights from imaginaries research can be mobilised through feasible approaches. The session foregrounds environmental social sciences as not only interpretive but also interventionist, capable of supporting reflexive, participatory, and actionable processes for sustainable futures. We invite contributions that move beyond diagnosing imaginaries towards advancing tangible, co-created pathways for more sustainable futures.
Moving beyond traditional paper presentations, the session employs an interactive fishbowl discussion format to facilitate dialogue across disciplines. The session begins with short (approximately 5-minute) introductory presentations, selected through an abstract submission process. These initial inputs feed into a series of facilitated fishbowl discussions, the themes of which will be informed based on the selected abstracts. Two of the presenters at a time take part in each facilitated discussion, in which participants from the audience are invited to join as the conversation unfolds, enabling both listening and active, low-threshold contribution.
We welcome empirical and conceptual contributions that explore co-creation, transdisciplinary collaboration, participatory futures methods, or real-world experiments, and that critically reflect on their potentials and limitations. We are especially looking for bold, transformative ideas that challenge the status quo!
Inayatullah, S. (2008). Six pillars: Futures thinking for transforming. Foresight : The Journal of Futures Studies, Strategic Thinking and Policy, 10(1), 4–21. https://doi.org/10.1108/14636680810855991
Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S. H. (Eds.). (2019). Dreamscapes of modernity: Sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power. University of Chicago Press.
Milkoreit, M. (2017). Imaginary politics: Climate change and making the future. Elementa, 5. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.249
Pereira, L., Nadia, S., Federica, R., Jimenez-Aceituno, A., & Merrie, A. (2019). Building capacities for transformative change towards sustainability: Imagination in Intergovernmental Science-Policy Scenario Processes. Elementa, 7. https://doi.org/10.1525/elementa.374
Stirling, A. (2015). Emancipating Transformations: From controlling ‘the transition’ to culturing plural radical progress. In I. Scoones, M. Leach, & P. Newell (Eds), The Politics of Green Transformations. Taylor & Francis. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315747378
- Eerika Albrecht:
Co-creating Nature Futures for Nuortti and Kemi Rivers - K. Tolvanen (University of Turku, Faculty of Science, Department of Biodiversity Sciences), M. Salo (Luke), I.E. Sääksjärvi (University of Turku, Faculty of Science, Department of Biodiversity Sciences), T. Luoma (Luke), J. Räikkönen (University of Turku, Faculty of Science, Department of Biodiversity Sciences):
From Imaginaries to Future Images: Visualizing Biodiversity in Finnish Forest Environments - Jean-Pierre Imbrogiano (University of Jyväskylä), Tiina Onkila (University of Jyväskylä), Elizabeth Nichols (University of Otago), and Lauri-Matti Palmunen (University of Turku):
Conceptual Change and Sustainable Business Transformation: A Phenomenon-Driven Review and Research Agenda - Teea Kortetmäki (University of Jyväskylä):
Cohabitability as a Framing for Co-creating Sustainable Futures - Riina Näsi and Hazel Salminen:
Role-play Workshops to Support Collaboratively Imagined Sustainable Futures - Li Xi (Universiti Putra Malaysia) and Yao Yue (Universiti Putra Malaysia):
From Climate Awareness to Collective Action: Co-creating Sustainable Futures through Stakeholder Engagement and Strategic Communication
Lauri Lahikainen (Tampereen yliopisto)
Anni Arponen (Turun yliopisto)
Oskari Hakala (Turun yliopisto)
Politiikka on kompromissien taidetta, myös ympäristöpolitiikka. Mutta ketkä näitä kompromisseja tekevät ja minkälaisin ehdoin? Millä kaikilla yhteiskunnan tasoilla ja millaisissa instituutioissa ympäristöpolitiikkaa tehdään? Millaisia toimijoita ovat ympäristöpolitiikan tehokkaimmat vallankäyttäjät? Miten yksittäinen viranhaltija voi toimia ympäristön kannalta eettisesti erilaisten intressiryhmien ja institutionaalisten roolien ristipaineessa? Mitä mahdollisuuksia ja rajoitteita liittyy erilaisissa institutionaalisissa tai poliittisissa rooleissa toimimiseen ympäristöpolitiikassa? Millainen ympäristöeettinen vastuu on viranhaltijoilla, asiantuntijoilla, taloudellisen vallan käyttäjillä, poliitikoilla tai aktiivisilla kansalaisilla?
Tässä työryhmässä tarkastellaan ympäristöpoliittista valtaa, vallankäyttöä, valtakamppailuja ja vastuuta. Esitelmät voivat olla empiirisiä, teoreettisia tai filosofisia tai tutkimuksellisesti informoituja käytännöllisiä politiikkaehdotuksia. Esitelmät voivat käsitellä esimerkiksi seuraavia teemoja:
• Yksilöiden rooli ympäristöpolitiikkaa tekevissä instituutioissa
• Erilaisissa yhteiskunnallisissa asemissa toimivien yksilöiden vaikutusmahdollisuudet
• Biodiversiteettipolitiikan tai ilmastopolitiikan erityispiirteet suhteessa muihin poliittisiin kysymyksiin
• Ympäristöpolitiikan arki ja vallankäyttö
• Agendan asettamisen valta ympäristöpolitiikassa
• Lobbaamisen etiikka ja politiikka
• Talouspoliittisen vallan ja ympäristöpolitiikan suhde
• Ympäristöpolitiikka ja eliitti
• Ideologiat ympäristöpolitiikassa
• Valtasuhteet eri ympäristöpoliittisissa kysymyksissä, esimerkiksi luontokadon ja ilmastonmuutoksen hillinnässä tai niihin varautumisessa
• Vapaaehtoisuuden ja pakkojen suhde ympäristöpolitiikassa
- Uula Saastamoinen & Jonne Hytönen:
Sitovat reunaehdot vai tapauskohtainen arviointi: valtion legitimiteettivaje uusiutuvan energian suunnittelussa ja yhteisvaikutusten hallinnassa - Inari Gustafsson, Anna Kukkonen & Maija Jokela:
Vanhojen metsien kriteerien määrittely Suomessa: kuinka vihreä kritiikki haastoi teollisen logiikan mitata luontoa - Kamilla Karhunmaa, Sampsa Hyysalo, Lasse Peltonen, Kaisa Schmidt-Thomé, Antti Silvast, Sahib Singh:
Energiapoliittisen osallistumisen pysyvyydet ja kansalaisten osallistumisen mahdollisuudet - Sami Mustikkamaa & Ari Nieminen:
Ecological Modernization or Treadmill of Production: Comparison of Finnish forest and energy sectors - Anni Mustonen:
Luonnon puhevalta ja edustajuus maankäytön suunnittelussa - Marjaana Sjölund:
Kenen sanat päätyvät metsälakiin? Tekstien samankaltaisuus vaikutusvallan indikaattorina ympäristöoikeudellisessa lainvalmistelussa - Miia Toikka & Jari Autioniemi:
Virkamiesten kestävyystoimijuuden jännitteet: relationaalinen näkökulma - Lauri Lahikainen, Anni Arponen, Oskari Hakala, Suvi Elise Nurmi, Anna Salomaa:
Kompromissit ja eturyhmien valta biodiversiteettipolitiikassa
Tuulia Reponen (University of Helsinki)
Riku Löf (University of Helsinki)
Sonja Pietiläinen (University of Helsinki)
For a brief moment, scientifically necessary climate action seemed to become political common sense. Thanks to the unprecedented mobilisation of millions of people, political pressure amounted to emergency declarations, climate elections, new legislation and road maps to carbon neutrality. Enter pandemic, war in Europe, as well as energy and cost of living crisis and the momentum was quickly won by the climate obstructionist counter-mobilisation.
For climate obstructionists and “climate realists” alike, climate action should be done by somebody else somewhere else or at some other time when it is economically more feasible. A mixture of racist and techno-optimist hopium is politically sold as fossil capitalist realism. Anyone publicly disagreeing with this vision is a fair target of repression and criminalisation, ranging from stigmatisation to outright violence. Arguably, these are morbid symptoms of a fossil regime refusing to make space for sustainable futures.
This working group explores how different narratives and practices are employed to ensure the continuity of institutions, industries and imperial modes of living that are exacerbating the ecological breakdown. We welcome all contributions that help us learn what is truly new to this moment and what was there all along.
We invite papers addressing how facts and fictions are mobilised to obstruct just environmental and climate action, including, but not limited to:
• Denial and distortion of climate science
• Criminalisation of environmental activism
• Obstructive appeals to “realism” in climate politics
• Forms of far-right ecologies
• Green colonialism and extractivism
• Obstructive strategies of fossil, forest and other industries, politicians, think tanks etc.
• Intersections between ecological crises and different forms of militarism, nationalism authoritarianism, sexism and racism etc.
The format of the session includes up to six 15-minute-presentations (incl. discussion).
- Risto-Matti Matero:
Presenting alternatives or hijacking the conversation? ”Climate realist” discourses and strategies in the Confederation of Finnish Industries, 1993-2008 - Anna Hausmann, Tuomas Väisänen, Tuuli Toivonen, Gonzalo Cortés-Capano:
Social media and the unequal visibility of climate-energy narratives - Atalay Yavan:
Climate Shareholder Proposals in the U.S. Oil and Gas Industry: Influence Strategies and Corporate Responses - Michiru Nagatsu:
Taking capitalism seriously, but perhaps not too seriously? - Sonja Pietiläinen:
Gender, population control and the environmental crisis in the politics of the far-right women in Finland - Tuulia Reponen:
Effective climate speech = crime against a climate obstructionist society? - Riku Löf, Otto Snellman, Sakari Säynäjoki ja Amos Wallgren:
Climate Realism: A repertoire of obstruction in elite climate politics?
Monica Tennberg (University of Lapland)
Sanna Kopra (University of Lapland)
Outi Rantala (University of Lapland)
Juulia Tikkanen (University of Lapland)
A multispecies approach seeks to break down the traditional human-nature dualism and to position humans as entangled within a broader community of living beings. Applied to the study of world politics, the multispecies approach problematizes human-nature separation in practices of imagining life, both human and non-human, as the focus of politics. Storytelling, speculative narratives, and imaginative frameworks provide tools for envisioning alternative futures in world politics in which diverse beings can flourish together, navigating complex, often entangled, and also conflictive multispecies relationships. The session welcomes presentations that discuss different multispecies “worldings”, onto-epistemological, ethical and methodological questions, as well as applications of the multispecies approach in narrating, speculating, and imagining alternative futures for world politics.
Accepted abstracts
- Charlotta Holmström, University of Helsinki:
Beyond the human-nature divide: Using holarchistic systems thinking to reframe sustainability narratives - Sanni Hatakka, University of Helsinki:
Multispecies ethnography – Complicating multispecies relations on a dairy farm - Niko Väistö, University of Lapland:
Multispecies companionship in the Film Polar Night Light - Joonas Vola, University of Lapland:
More-than-human guardianship? Environmental personhood, keystones species and tutelary deities - Corinna Casi, COHAB research project, University of Jyväskylä:
Implications of conceptualizing multispecies cohabitable places - Juulia Tikkanen, University of Lapland:
U(dys)topian play in a tourism resort - Monica Tennberg, University of Lapland:
The Baltic Sea of emotions: Affective biopolitics on invasive alien species - Satu Aavanranta, University of Helsinki:
Journey to the Futures: Embodied knowledge co-production for multispecies futures in policymaking - Sanna Kopra, University of Lapland & Liisa Kauppila, University of Lapland:
Imagining multispecies world politics: scenario-building process on the Planetocene
Erkki-Jussi Nylén (Finnish Environment Institute)
Pekka Jokinen (Tampere University)
Inkeri Saarenaho (Finnish Environment Institute)
Infrastructures—such as roads, power lines, sewer systems, and power stations—constitute the metabolic foundation of contemporary societies. Beyond their material dimensions, these infrastructures are inherently social, as their construction, operation, and maintenance depend on expertise, regulatory frameworks, governance structures, and economic arrangements (Barry 2020).
Decisions regarding the construction of new infrastructure are often framed as indicators of progress. However, choices about what to build, where to build, and where not to build can also produce unintended consequences, including social inequalities, harm to livelihoods, and environmental impacts (Mwaura and Lawhon, 2024). Furthermore, some of these consequences may be further exacerbated by increasing land use driven by the transition to low-carbon societies (Naumann and Rudolph, 2020). Decisions over infrastructures may initiate heated public debate on pros and cons and how cons are compensated, but decisions may also remain apolitical despite of their magnitude (Ampe et al. 2020).
Regardless of the state of debate, decisions about infrastructure development tend to lock in particular operating logics, with significant material and social ramifications (Unruh, 2009). While infrastructures are often long-lasting, they are also subject to decay, breakdown, and malfunction. Addressing these issues requires substantial capital investment for repair and renewal; however, the political will to raise fees or allocate public funds for such purposes is often limited (Barry, 2020).
We invite proposals for presentations on a wide range of topics related to the political dimensions of infrastructure. Relevant themes may include, but are not limited to, energy production and the green transition, waste management and resource recovery, and sanitation and wastewater treatment. While contributions grounded in Environmental Policy are particularly welcome, we also encourage the use of diverse theoretical frameworks.
Ampe et al. (2020). https://doi.org/10.1080/1523908X.2019.1680275
Barry (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43965-1_6
Mwaura and Lawhon (2024). https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2024.2387992
Naumann and Rudolph (2020). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2019.12.011
Unruh (2000). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0301-4215(00)00070-7
- Inkeri Saarenaho, Finnish Environment Institute (SYKE):
Introduction to session - Farid Karimi and Ehsan Marzban, Department of Social Sciences and Philosophy, University of Jyväskylä:
Social Acceptance of Green Transition Megaprojects in Finnish Small Cities - Panu Runko and Hanna Lempinen, Natural Resources Institute Finland (LUKE):
Large-scale solar power projects as transformative infrastructure on Finnish peatlands - Venla Isomäki, Department of Built Environment, Aalto University:
Hydro-Social Politics of Sustainability: Discursive Constructs and Material Outcomes in Finnish Water Governance - Erkki-Jussi Nylén (Finnish Environment Institute, SYKE) and Pekka Jokinen (Faculty of Management and Business, Tampere University):
From nonissue to matter of concern? Wastewater treatment infrastructures under transition
Sampsa Hyysalo (Aalto University)
Jani Lukkarinen (Suomen ympäristökeskus, SYKE)
Satu Lähteenoja (Demos Helsinki)
Antti Silvast (LUT University)
The participation of diverse actors – stakeholders and citizens alike – in sustainability transformations has gained increasing attention. The ’post-normal’ nature of environmental problems has led to a surge in co-production of knowledge between scientists, policy makers and citizens. However, the bulk of research on co-production and participation in environmental governance has remained aspirational and methodological, although it is well established elsewhere that such approaches are mired by (participation) paradoxes that render multiple fronts of critique constitutive to their nature. For instance, engagement activities in public processes at different levels are viewed as policy failures or only achieving partial success rather than being taken to offer policy complements. Similarly, participation has been considered a privilege of engaged communities and citizens to pursue changes and geared towards those most interested in participating. Meanwhile, official roadmaps, policy scenarios, computer models, and many other decision-support tools shape what kind of participation is possible and which futures are plausible upstream before any participatory processes. As such, participation and co-production are not immune to routinisation and bureaucratisation and thus similar initiatives persist without broader learning on how to reorganise participation. Inspired by systemic and material approaches to participation, this workshop aims to address the question of participation and discuss diverse approaches to developing participation and knowledge co-production in the governance of sustainability transformations.
This paper presentation session invites submissions of methodological, theoretical and empirical contributions.
- Wingström, R., De Jonge, J., Varissaari, S., Fonseca, L., & Vainio, T.:
How technologies shape the knowledge of urban space and stakeholder agencies in co creative planning - Heli Saarikoski, Jani Lukkarinen, Salla Annala, Satu Lähteenoja, Kaarina Kaminen, Hanna-Liisa Kangas, Kaisa Matschoss, Outi Pitkänen, Venla Riekkinen:
Co-creating flexible carbon-free energy systems—experiences from a transition arena addressing demand response solutions - Eva Heiskanen & Ilona Kousa:
The role of materiality in polarization around the energy transition: contexts and artifacts - Ketonen-Oksi & Hilkka Lydén:
Ethical Canvas for Social Co-design: Integrating Futures Consciousness and Planetary Perspectives - Lukkarinen:
Truck transitions: How knowledge co-production holds its shape - Johanna Liipola, Annika Holmbom, Nani Pajunen:
Service design and co-learning as a tool for accelerating the Sustainability Transition in manufacturing companies - Gailume-Zohara, Zanda Dina Bite:
“We know best how hospital works!” Participation, situated knowledge and green transition in Latvian state-sector hospitals - Silvikko, Marika:
‘Can you repeat the same experiment?’: Heat Pump Users as Knowledge Producers in the Energy Transition - Tikkanen, Taika:
From Decades of Conflict to Constructive Collaboration – A Case Study of the Mediation Process regarding the Kvarken nature conservation area - Katriina Kenttämies, Satu Lähteenoja, Kaisa Schmidt-Thomé, Sampsa Hyysalo:
Whose voice counts? Civil servants, NGOs and activists in Finnish climate governance participation - Matti Kojo, Maare Käis, Heppu-Eemeli Honkanen, Niina Kiviluoma:
Co-creating pathways for change: Deliberative process in a small modular reactor case study - Pauliina Lehtonen (Tampere University), Kirsikka Kaipainen (Tampere University), Silja Kostia (Tampere University of Applied Sciences), Riina Lundman (Tampere University) & Maria Åkerman (Tampere University of Applied Sciences):
Community funding as an infrastructure of participation in climate-neutral urban transitions - Kamilla Karhunmaa, Sampsa Hyysalo, Lasse Peltonen, Kaisa Schmidt-Thomé, Antti Silvast, Sahib Singh:
Energiapolitiisen osallistumisen pysyvyydet ja kansalaisten osallistumisen mahdollisuudet - Lehtimäki, Tomi (Aalto University), Karhunmaa, Kamilla (Aalto University), Kenttämies, Katriina (Aalto University), Huovila, Helmi (Demos Helsinki), Hautamäki, Lotta (LUT University), Schmidt-Thomé, Kaisa (Demos Helsinki), Lähteenoja, Satu (Aalto University, Demos Helsinki), Saad-Sulonen, Joanna (Aalto University), Hyysalo, Sampsa (Aalto University):
Mapping engagements with energy and climate in Finland - Ojala, Jussi R:
Participation as an evolving practice: understanding teleo-affective orientations in a sustainability intervention
Ossi Ollinaho (University of Helsinki)
Sophia Hagolani-Albov (University of Helsinki)
The mainstream narrative around ecological restoration holds that damaged ecosystems can be rehabilitated to address environmental crises while improving local livelihoods and advancing environmental justice. This narrative, however, blends solid empirical grounding with aspirational imaginaries that warrant closer scrutiny.
On the factual side, the political ecology of ecosystem degradation is well-documented. Decades of experience with restoration through agroforestry also demonstrate that meaningful transformation of degraded landscapes — transformation that creates sustainable livelihoods — is genuinely achievable. These are not empty promises; the evidence base is real.
Yet the claim that restorative schemes deliver environmental justice is better understood as an imaginary: a set of assumptions and aspirations that, in practice, tends to legitimise territorial control exercised under the banner of restoration. The dominant narrative positions the global North as initiator and funder, and large international NGOs as coordinators, primarily in service of carbon credits and other compensation mechanisms. Livelihood improvements are possible, but they may carry little weight for project funders whose priorities lie elsewhere. And when restoration efforts remain narrowly focused at the local level, the broader political and economic structures driving degradation are left unexamined and intact — precisely the structures, and the exploitative relations they sustain, that produce local environmental predicaments in the first place.
This working group is anchored in the Trees for Development project (treesfordev.fi), but we welcome contributions from beyond it. We invite research that explores alternative narratives opening different pathways for restoration and lending legitimacy to locally grounded approaches. We are particularly interested in research that foregrounds counter-narratives -cases where restoration is initiated, defined, and led by local actors themselves. We also welcome work that critically examines the assumptions embedded in the claims of funders and other proponents of ecological restoration schemes.
This session will be convened by Ossi Ollinaho and Sophia Hagolani-Albov, both from Global Development Studies at the University of Helsinki. Each presenter will get approx. 12 mins to present their research (final time depending on number of presenters). After all participants have presented, we will open the floor for a discussion with the audience participants that is centred on the presentations.
- Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes, Markus Kröger, Ossi Ollinaho, Marketta Vuola, Sophia Hagolani-Albov, Linda Annala-Tesfaye & Sergio Sauer:
Ecological Restoration as a Contested Field of Action: Between Green Extractivism and Transformative Restoration - Markus Kröger & Ossi Ollinaho:
Towards a Socio-Tree Planting turn? New tree-planting initiatives in the Brazilian Amazon by socio-ecological movements - Katherine Hall:
Nature’s actors in the spotlight: investigating conservationist actor roles and influence on ecological restoration in authoritarian Central and Western Asia - Matthieu Pierre, Marketta Vuola and Sophia Hagolani-Albov:
Hybrid institutions and environmental governance: The role of dina in ecological restoration in Madagascar
Kirsi Salonen (LUT University & Maastricht University)
Anna Härri (Aalto University)
Regenerative organizing has gained traction in both scholarly and practitioner discussions on sustainability, promising a shift from minimizing harm to actively restoring and renewing socio-ecological systems (Hahn & Tampe, 2021). Yet it remains unclear whether regeneration represents a genuine paradigm shift (Taveras-Dalmau, 2025) in how organizations operate, or whether it risks becoming another aspirational but underspecified buzzword that is difficult to implement and prone to corporate capture and greenwashing (Levelt et al., 2026; Salonen et al., 2025).
Recent literature suggests that the concept of regeneration could help advance positive and transformative visions on how to re-build a world that is dominated by regenerative rather than degenerative dynamics (Fischer et al., 2026). When applied to business organizations, however, such visions challenge conventional assumptions about purpose, value creation, and human–nature relations, making regeneration difficult to integrate into existing organizational contexts. At the same time, the concept remains theoretically fragmented. For example, despite its emphasis on place and ecological systems, key issues like ecological dynamics and biodiversity are often not included in discussions on regeneration (Veijalainen et al., 2026).
This session invites critical and constructive engagement with regenerative organizing across different sectors of society, with particular interest on empirical business and organization studies. We welcome contributions that explore, for example, but not limited to:
• How regeneration is interpreted, translated, and contested in organizational contexts
• How organizations experiment with regenerative practices, and with what outcomes or unintended consequences
• What kinds of capabilities, collaborations, and governance arrangements regenerative organizing involves
• How systems thinking, place-based perspectives, and ecological considerations are integrated into organizing.
We invite contributions from various theoretical and disciplinary perspectives. The session includes 10-minute presentations followed by a short discussion, plus a summary discussion/Q&A at the end of the session.
Fischer, J., Farny, S., Abson, D. J., Zuin Zeidler, V., von Salisch, M., Schaltegger, S., … & Kümmerer, K. (2024). Mainstreaming regenerative dynamics for sustainability. Nature Sustainability, 7(8), 964-972.
Fischer, J., Farny, S., Pacheco-Romero, M., & Folke, C. (2026). Resilience and regeneration for a world in crisis. Ambio, 55(1), 24-34.
Hahn, T., & Tampe, M. (2021). Strategies for regenerative business. Strategic Organization, 19(3), 456-477.
Levelt, L., Chevrollier, N., & Argyrou, A. (2025). Regeneration, sufficiency and degrowth: an integrative review of organising in a strong sustainability era. Sustainability Science, 1-23.
Salonen, K., Ritala, P., & Bocken, N. (2025). Emerging regenerative business paradigm: Narrative review, synthesis, and research agenda. Journal of Circular Economy, 3(3).
Taveras-Dalmau, V., Becken, S., & Westoby, R. (2025). From paradigm blindness to paradigm shift? An integrative review and critical analysis of the regenerative paradigm. Ambio, 54(12), 1985-2004.
Veijalainen, A., Salo, M., Rouhiainen, H., Räikkönen, J., & Sääksjärvi, I. E. (2026). Bridging biodiversity and regenerative development: Conceptual groundwork for life-affirming relationships. Ambio, 1-10.
Accepted abstracts
- Mathilda Esmeralda Spira:
Regenerative knowledge integrity: a systematic review of knowledge processes in regenerative entrepreneurship - Katri Einola:
“Your clients are the birds” – Re-thinking Urban Development for Regenerative Futures - Ari Jokinen, Helena Leino, Markus Laine* and Pekka Jokinen:
Regenerative agency: Transformation through radical contextuality and co-agency - Korey Wetherell:
From Aspiration to Structure: More-Than-Human Relations and the Limits of Regenerative Organizing - Anu Veijalainen:
Integrating regenerative tourism into nature-positive municipal development: Early stages of co-creation
Katri Weckroth (Tampere University)
Henna Juusola (University of Jyväskylä)
Katariina Buure (LUT University)
Linda Majander (University of Jyväskylä)
Hanna Paulomäki (LUT University)
Pasi Takkinen (University of Jyväskylä)
Kirsi Salonen (LUT University)
Academic work is often valued through quantitative indicators such as publications and external funding, which align with global ranking systems that prioritise speed and productivity (Mannevuo & Valovirta, 2022). This is linked to broader societal acceleration and growth logics, creating a contradiction for sustainability researchers: their work aims for transformation within planetary boundaries, yet it is often produced in academic environments that normalise constant output and expansion (Houtbeckers, 2024). Recent research, however, suggests resistance can be nourished, for instance, in communities that question the logic of acceleration from within and foster collective slowness and imaginaries of alternative academic practices (Juusola et al., 2026).
This session invites submissions across different fields within environmental social science that explore, broadly considered, the connections between sustainability research, values, practices and agency in academic work, and societal transformations toward good life within planetary boundaries.
We invite submissions from various fields, also beyond conventional research approaches. The aim is to co-create a workshop (including short presentations, comments and a joint discussion) on sustainability research where unfinished ideas, imaginaries as well as critique and disagreements can be explored in a safe space. We welcome abstracts (in English or Finnish) outlining your research and the key questions you would like to explore together in the session — nothing has to be finished, we value works-in-progress.
Houtbeckers, E. (2004). Should I Stay or Should I Go? Academic Tempered Radicalism in the Era of Ecological Crisis. In At the Frontiers of Everyday Life: New Research in Cramped Spaces (pp. 19–35). Springer Nature Switzerland.
Juusola, H., Buure, K., Majander, L., Paulomäki, H., Salomäki, S., Salonen, K., et al. (2026). Hidas akateemisuus ja kestävyystutkijuus Puistokatu 4 -yhteisössä, Tiedepolitiikka, 51(1): 24–36. https://doi.org/10.58957/tp.164033
Valovirta, E., & Mannevuo, M. (2022). Affective academic time management in the neoliberal university: From timeliness to timelessness. European Journal of Cultural Studies, 25(5), 1307–1323.
- Henna Juusola (University of Jyväskylä), Katariina Buure (LUT University), Linda Majander (University of Jyväskylä), Hanna Paulomäki (LUT University), Pasi Takkinen (University of Jyväskylä), Kirsi Salonen (LUT University), Katri Weckroth (Tampere University):
Entanglements of acceleration, sustainability and academic work – reflections from the Hidas Akatemia (Slow Academia) collective - Minna Santaoja (Tampere University):
The power and burden of persistence - Delphine Rumo (Aalto University):
Postpartum and Artificial Intelligence: complacency of acceleration in academia - Ilona Steiler (Tampere University):
The Great Time Robbery or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love AI
Galina Kallio (University of Helsinki)
Will LaFleur (University of Helsinki)
Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto (University of Turku)
Sensory knowledge is an irreducible aspect of all scientific research. Although by convention the sensory experiences of scientists are typically invisible in scientific publications, and sustained attention to the senses in ethnographic research has historically gone in and out of vogue, the ‘sensory turn’ in social sciences and the development of sensory ethnography has redrawn scholars’ attention to these critical aspects of socio-environmental life; urging explicit reflection on the sensory ways in which they attend to and interpret the world they study.
This session aims to deepen and extend the methodological ethics of sensory ethnography to other, not-necessarily-ethnographic research approaches in pursuit of a rigorous science that represents the world as sensory, material and relational. In what ways does attending to ours and others’ (including other-than-human beings) sensory practices in research change the ways in which we come to know the studied phenomenon? How could we communicate more-than-visual ways of being and knowing in our writing or other modes of representation? How to tell powerful stories that reach not only other academics, but also wider publics in ways that are affectively charged while being scientifically robust?
This workshop seeks submissions that address the intricacies, difficulties, and successes of incorporating sensory methods and practices into research designs and processes. Rather than presenting what is conventionally referred to as a “paper” — whether a manuscript in progress or a published article — participants are encouraged to share their research context through ethnographic or other types of texts (e.g., fieldnotes, ethnographic fiction, or analytical writing), photographs, soundscapes, film, drawings, or other creative modes of (re)presentation. Through these materials, participants should introduce a question, a challenge, or an insight that troubles or inspires them. Each presentation will follow a joint discussion. Power Point-only presentations will not be accepted.
The workshop seeks to create a supportive space for collective reflection and experimentation, encouraging dialogue on how attending to sensory ways of knowing can enhance our understanding of both (un)sustainable living and the sensory, embodied, and relational processes through which research is conducted.
Classen, C. (1997). Foundations for an anthropology of the senses. International Social Science Journal, 49(153), 401–412.
Clifford, J., & Marcus, G. (Eds.). (1986). Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography. University of California Press.
Feld, S., & Basso, K. H. (Eds.). (1996). Senses of Place. School of American Research Press.
Howes, D. (Ed.). (1991). The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses. University of Toronto Press.
Howes, D. (Ed.). (2005). Empire of the Senses: The Sensual Culture Reader. Berg.
Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling & Skill. Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2011). Being Alive: Essays on Movement, Knowledge and Description. Routledge.
Ingold, T. (2022). Imagining for Real: Essays on Creation, Attention and Correspondence. Routledge.
Pink, S. (2015). Doing Sensory Ethnography (2nd ed.). Sage Publications.
Roberts, L. (2019). The senses in philosophy and science: Blindness and insight. In A. C. Vila (Ed.), A Cultural History of the Senses in the Age of Enlightenment (Vol. 4, pp. 109–131).
Stoller, P. (1989). The Taste of Ethnographic Things: The Senses in Anthropology. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Stoller, P. (1997). Sensuous Scholarship. University of Pennsylvania Press.
Vannini, P. (Ed.). (2024). The Routledge International Handbook of Sensory Ethnography. Routledge.
- Ephraim Daka, University of Turku:
Listening to Spoilage: Sensory frictions and everyday acts of knowing in food‐system fragility - Joss Allen, University of Warwick:
When I sing, I feel larger than the limits of my body: learning from collective singing as research - Maarit Forde, University of Helsinki:
Tidal Relations, Submerged Ethnography - Tiia Tuomisto, University of Helsinki:
Sensing in Nature – Doing Sensory Ethnography Among Contemporary Hunter-gatherers - Karoliina Kikuchi, University of Oulu:
Restorated peatlands and multispecies sensory knowledge - Riikka Armanto, University of Turku:
What can research be? - Jenny Rinkinen, University of Lappeenranta:
Living at the thresholds: sensing limits - Galina Kallio, Will LaFleur ja Eerika Koskinen-Koivisto (session vetäjät):
Closing session
Senja Laakso (University of Helsinki)
Teemu Koskimäki (University of Eastern Finland)
Tina Nyfors (University of Helsinki)
Sufficiency is a resurgent concept increasingly recognized as a necessary approach for reducing human pressure on the environment. It is connected to ideas of what is ‘enough’ versus ‘excess’ and how to define a ‘good life’ within environmental limits. As such, sufficiency has been defined as a principle of enoughness (Princen, 2005), “the space above the floor of necessity but below the ceiling of excess” (Gough, 2023), and sufficiency policies as “a set of measures and daily practices that avoid demand for energy, materials, land and water while delivering human wellbeing for all within planetary boundaries” (IPCC, 2022).
Sufficiency solutions, which seek to adjust both demand and supply, can be applied at various levels and sectors, encompassing government policies (Nyfors et al., 2020) and novel business practices (Beyeler and Jaeger-Erben, 2022). In addition, everyday practices and consumption patterns should evolve in a manner that is both just and acceptable (Sahakian et al., 2021). However, many challenges of implementing such solutions as part of a just sustainability transformation remain to be explored and the “untapped sufficiency potential” (IPCC, 2022) remains to be fully charted.
We welcome presentations addressing the potential of sufficiency solutions and the challenges related to their implementation. Contributions could include, but are not limited to: What factors could drive widespread implementation of sufficiency? How can sufficiency be applied in different sectors and across consumption-production systems? What could be the potential economic impacts of implementing sufficiency? How to imagine futures based on the principle of enoughness? How can policy visions and frameworks be designed to integrate sufficiency with other sustainability goals?
Beyeler, L., Jaeger-Erben, M. (2022). How to make more of less: Characteristics of sufficiency in business practices. Frontiers in Sustainability 3.
Gough, I. 2023. Sufficiency as a Value Standard: From Preferences to Needs. Ethics, Policy & Environment 0, 1–22.
IPCC (2022). Climate Change 2022: Mitigation of Climate Change. Contribution of Working Group III to the Sixth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [P.R. Shukla, J. et al., (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK and New York, NY, USA.
Nyfors, T. et al. (2020). Ecological Sufficiency in Climate Policy: Towards Policies for Recomposing Consumption. Tulevaisuuden tutkimuksen seura.
Princen, T. (2005). The logic of sufficiency. Mit Press.
Sahakian, M. et al. (2021). Advancing the concept of consumption corridors and exploring its implications. Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy 17, 305–315.
- Essi Nuorivaara, University of Helsinki:
Sufficiency in the margins of Finnish policy, everyday understandings and practices - Heta Leinonen, Roni Lappalainen, Mikael Nurminen, Tampere University:
Sufficiency or green growth? Stakeholder perspectives on the purpose of the circular economy in EU policymaking - Myele Rouxel, University of Eastern Finland:
A Cornerstone for the Sufficiency Transformation of the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy: Dispelling Two Persistent Fallacies - Fatemeh Jouzi, Lassi Linnanen, LUT:
Could AI offer an emergent opportunity for postgrowth policies? - Oskari Mehtätalo, University of Turku, University of Tampere:
Why don’t we see political discussion about degrowth? - Miika Marttila, LUT:
Imagining Sufficiency: Individual Abilities and Societal Structures for Sustainability Transformation - Rasmus Sihvonen, University of Eastern Finland:
What is enough? – Sufficiency Dialogues in search of sustainable well-being - Kaisa Kurki, LUT:
From excess to well-being: Sufficiency in food consumption - Vilija Satiene, Genovaite Liobikiene, Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania:
From Intention to Impact: Promoting Sufficiency in Household Consumption in Lithuania - Mirja Kälviäinen, LAB:
Provisioning sufficient consumption – service journeys with consideration of planetary boundaries - Tutta Oittinen, Annukka Näyhä, Venla Wallius, Jyväskylän yliopiston kauppakorkeakoulu; Resurssiviisausyhteisö JYU Wisdom:
Sufficient futures of Finnish forests: empirical findings of a backcasting study - Minna Kanerva, University of Bremen, Germany:
Grief and human-nature connection as a route through soft denial to acceptance of sufficiency
Kristel Edelman (Åbo Akademi)
Wilma Henning (Åbo Akademi, University of Gothenburg)
Sustainability transitions are unfolding in a context marked not only by environmental crises, but also by increasing contestation over knowledge, narratives and political priorities. Knowledge production plays a pivotal role in shaping how environmental issues are perceived and which solutions and actions are seen as suitable. Environmental action today must navigate tensions between long-term goals and short-term pressures, alongside policy backlash, competing interpretations of evidence, and struggles over whose knowledge counts.
At the same time, the European Green Deal promises to “leave no one behind”, yet gender equality and intersectional perspectives remain insufficiently integrated into environmental policy, research, and practice. This gap is critical: environmental change is experienced unevenly, shaped by gender alongside other intersectional dimensions, meaning more vulnerable groups are disproportionately affected while remaining underrepresented in shaping dominant narratives, expertise, and policy agendas.
Environmental social sciences highlight that sustainability transformations are not only technical or institutional processes, but also struggles over meaning, knowledge production, and imagined futures. Persistent divides remain between science and policy, knowledge and practice, and dominant and marginalised perspectives, i.e. divides closely linked to power and inequality.
This session invites theoretical, conceptual, and empirically informed contributions that advance debates on the relationships between knowledge, power, and inequality in sustainability transformations, and explores how gender equality and intersectionality can help bridge these divides. We examine how knowledge is produced, contested and mobilised, and how narratives and imaginaries can both constrain and enable gender-sensitive sustainability transitions.
We ask:
• How can feminist, intersectional, or critical approaches advance understandings of sustainability transitions?
• How can gender-sensitive and intersectional research inform environmental knowledge and policy in contexts of contested facts?
• How do narratives and imaginaries shape inclusion, resistance and policy outcomes?
• How can co-production across science, policy, and practice address both inequalities and sustainability goals?
We welcome submissions addressing sustainability transitions through gender, intersectionality, knowledge politics, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
This 90-minute session will feature a series of presentations, with each presenter allocated approximately 15 minutes, comprising a 10-minute presentation followed by discussion and questions. The session will conclude with a broader exchange among participants to reflect on common themes, emerging insights, and future research directions.
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Session I
- Genovaitė Liobikienė, Renata Dagiliūtė, Vilija Šatienė (Vytautas Magnus University):
Gender and Climate Change Policy - Safiya Adejoh (University of Abuja):
Whose Transition Counts? Gender, Knowledge and the Politics of Nigeria’s Energy Transition - Inna Perheentupa (University of Helsinki):
Mapping the Politics and Related Future Imaginaries of Sustainability Consultation - Gonzalo Cortés-Capano, Anna Hausmann, Jacqueline Loos, Marcela Brugnach, Noelia Zafra-Calvo (University of Jyväskylä; Basque Centre for Climate Change; University of Helsinki; Vienna University):
Narrating Plural Democratic Landscape Transformations in Contested Transitions: a Needs-Care-Justice Framework - Enerelt Enkhtuya (LUT University):
From Climate Policy to Practice: Can Social Innovation Help Overcome Implementation Gaps? - Minna Käyrä & Marileena Mäkelä (University of Jyväskylä):
Measuring the Unmeasurable? Footprints as Contested Guides for Sustainability Transformation - Anna Norberg (University of Helsinki):
Harnessing Ecological Predictions - Titta Tapiola, Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke):
Agricultural Innovations for Public Purpose: The Role of Public Research Institutes - Tuija Kajoskoski & Eva Heiskanen (University of Helsinki):
Engaging ‘Unlikely’ Participants in Hands-on Climate Action to Develop More Inclusive Climate Policy? - Antti Saarelainen, Mikko Piltonen, Lasse Peltonen (University of Eastern Finland):
Sustainability Transition on Local Scale – Case North Karelia Region - Matias Sivonen (University of Eastern Finland):
The Reflexive Performativity of ‘Favorable Conservation Status’ in Saimaa Ringed Seal Protection
Session II
Thaysa Portela de Carvalho (Åbo Akademi)
Johan Malmberg (Åbo Akademi)
The future holds a central role in sustainability transitions research, which aims to make sense of and navigate the changes necessary for societies to attain sustainable futures (e.g. Köhler et al., 2019). Imagined futures serve as the underlying frameworks through which we engage with the pervasive uncertainty and complexity associated with the problems on a collective and individual level (Friedrich and Hendriks, 2024). However, sustainability transitions are dependent on interpretations and social acceptance, hence they are fundamentally open-ended. Surprises and unintended outcomes are to be expected. Transitions are also conflictual and deeply political, producing trade-offs, winners and losers, and related struggles, as politically influential and well-resourced incumbents often resist change (Geels et al., 2019).
We welcome both empirical research and conceptual submissions, as full paper or work-in-progress papers. Questions include (but not limited to): How are imagined sustainable energy futures constructed, by whom, and in whose interests? How do imagined sustainable energy futures meet friction, failure, or resistance? How do imaginaries of sustainable energy futures translate (or fail to translate) into policies, infrastructures, and the lives of the people and communities they intentionally (or unintentionally) affect? How do affected communities negotiate, resist, or reimagine dominant transition pathways? What new frameworks for future-making (including its accompanying narratives) are needed to grapple honestly with the complexity and conflict inherent in transitions?
Session consists of oral presentations (power-point may be used but not mandatory) followed by reviwe comments and discussion with the whole group. The presentations should be limited to 10 min, followed by 20 min of peer discussion. The peer discussion starts with the assigned reviewer, and then to host organizers, and then to whole group.
Friedrich, J.; Hendriks, A. (2024). Imagined futures in sustainability transitions: Towards diverse future-making. Futures, 164.
Geels et al. (2019). Sustainability transitions: Policy and practice. European Environment Agency.
Köhler et al. (2019). An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions.
- Viliina Kaikkonen:
The politics of lithium in Portugal: exploring frictions, contradictions, and disputes in speculative resource-making - Raakel Vuojolainen:
Failing better for just and sustainable futures: Embracing failure as a feature of sustainability transformations - Thaysa Portela de Carvalho:
Fair winds? Emerging policy contradictions for offshore wind power expansion in Finland’s EEZ - Kristina Leppälä, Mariana Lyra, Hanna Lehtimäki:
Imagining Just Energy Futures: Sociotechnical Imaginaries in Finland’s Peat Transition - Maria Bellou:
The Capture of Greek Energy Communities: Regime Resistance against Social Innovation Niches in the Energy Democracy Circuit - Sanni Sipinen:
The roles of the state in green transition: The Finnish battery and extractive industries - Hanna Lempinen, Pia Smeds & Michael Kull:
Imagining (energy) futures through a rural energy community - Safiya Adejoh:
Competing Imaginaries of Nigeria’s Sustainable Energy Future: From Gas Bridge to Net Zero - Johanna Ahola-Launonen:
When epistemic-affective resources become excessive: Reflexivity and closure in technological orientations - Markku Lehtonen, Tapio Litmanen, Mika Kari, Matti Kojo:
Modernist and presentist technoscientific promises: Media reporting on small nuclear modular reactors in Finland and Sweden
Jing Ding (Tampere University)
Ossi Laaksamo (Tampere University)
Tuuli Hirvilammi (Tampere University)
Eeva Houtbeckers (Tampere University of Applied Sciences, University of Eastern Finland)
The organization of work plays a pivotal role in sustainability transformations. In the context of welfare states, work determines what goods and services are produced and how, how much material and energy is used, and to what extent individual, collective, and planetary well-being are ensured.
This session invites contributions that explore future visions of work in a more sustainable world. What are the socio-ecological impacts of work? What kinds of work are urgently needed to safeguard social and ecological sustainability? What kinds of work need to be scaled down? How can social and ecological work be organized beyond formal employment to encompass meaningful activities in socially reproductive spheres?
We are interested in how different actors, such as researchers, policymakers, activists, workers, citizens, labor market organizations, and civil society members, envision the content, format, and cultural recognition of socio-ecological work. How do these imaginaries support or change existing narratives about sustainability transformations? What public policies are compatible with and tailored to these visions? Additionally, we are interested in how the massive spread of AI use in workplaces is attached to the imaginaries in relation to the future of sustainable work.
We invite conceptual, empirical, and/or policy-focused presentations from various fields. We highly encourage interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary perspectives, as well as a broad range of theories and methodological approaches to studying work-focused future imaginaries.
The session lasts 90 minutes. It consists of a 5-minute opening, five 15-minute presentations (10 minutes for presentation and 5 minutes for comments), and a 10-minute joint thematic discussion at the end.
Please send your paper proposal (abstract of max. 250 words) to the corresponding convenor Jing Ding (jing.ding@tuni.fi) by 15 September 2026.
Zeynep Ceren Correia (Åbo Akademi)
Jason Finch (Åbo Akademi)
Nirali Joshi (Åbo Akademi)
Adam Borch (Åbo Akademi)
RAILIMAGE PROJECT
Rail is a key infrastructure within global mobility systems, accounting for approximately 9% of freight and 8% of passenger transport while using only around 3% of energy used in transportation. Beyond its environmental efficiency, long-haul rail is increasingly positioned as a driver of sustainable transition due to its low-carbon performance, space efficiency, and central role in inter- and co-modality across freight and passenger systems. It also carries significant but underexplored potential for social transformation, including improved accessibility and emerging, yet unrealised, forms of gender-inclusive employment.
The session begins from the recognition that railway governance provides a formally defined boundary of the railway vicinity, typically understood as the infrastructure and its immediate operational and safety surroundings. However, while this definition clarifies where railway vicinity begins in regulatory terms, it remains insufficient for capturing how railway space is lived, represented, and historically produced. Building on this, the session critically rethinks railway vicinity as a relational concept, developed through an analysis of twentieth-century railway representations.
Railway representations, encompassing people, spaces, and practices, open up a broader understanding of what counts as ‘near’, ‘connected’, or ‘inside’. Drawing together representations, including textual, literary, cartographic, visual and audio based art, as well as other cultural forms, from across the world, the session will bring shifting urban–rural relations, moral economies, and care relationships into the discussion. We will further explore, among other areas, racialized mobilities, partnerships for collective infrastructural goals, and processes of professional transformation, including de-staffing, to inform debates on just transitions.
Ultimately, the session aims to foreground what is disguised within representations by demonstrating how the railway vicinity expands into a relational field, offering new ways to understand mobility, infrastructure, and sustainable futures. The session forms part of the RAILIMAGE project (2024–2027; (https://blogs2.abo.fi/railimage/), contributing to an urgently needed humanisation of transport studies through the reconstruction of the global qualitative and imaginative history of long-distance rail journeys.
We hope to foster critical dialogue by encouraging comparative analyses across diverse geographical and historical contexts and engaging with a wide range of themes that challenge established assumptions, question dominant frameworks, and explore new questions and methodologies within humanistic traditions. To this end, we invite philosophical, theoretical, conceptual, empirical, and policy-oriented contributions from diverse disciplines that engage with railway vicinities.
We welcome proposals for 15-minute in-person presentations in our session.
Adair, R., & Martin, A. (2018). A Driving Bloomsbury: Virginia Woolf, Vanessa Bell, and the Meaning of the Motor-Car. Woolf Studies Annual, 24, 75-100.
Brömmelstroet, T., Mladenović, M., Nikolaeva, A., Gaziulusoy, İ., Ferreira, A., Schmidt-Thomé, K., … & Bergsma, B. (2022). Identifying, nurturing and empowering alternative mobility narratives. Journal of Urban Mobility, 2, 100031.
Erkan, Y. (2018). Viewpoint: Historic Urban Landscape Approach for Sustainable Urban Development. The Historic Environment: Policy & Practice, 9(3–4), 346–348. https://doi.org/10.1080/17567505.2018.1517192
Finch, J. (2016). Deep Locational Criticism: Imaginative Place in Literary Research and Teaching. Routledge.
Fraser, B. and S. Spalding (eds). (2022). Transnational Railway Cultures. Berghahn.
Geels, F. W., & Verhees, B. (2011). Cultural legitimacy and framing struggles in innovation journeys: A cultural-performative perspective and a case study of Dutch nuclear energy (1945–1986). Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 78(6), 910-930.
Gibson, A. G., & Bengtsen, S. S. (2024). Who is ‘society’ in the societal impact debate?–A critical discussion of policies of closure. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 1-14.
Hess, D. J. (2014). Sustainability transitions: A political coalition perspective. Research Policy, 43(2), 278-283.
Kim, Taehee. (2024). “An Anthropological Approach to Mobilities: Noel B. Salazar.” Mobility Humanities, 3(1), 149-157.
Köhler, J., Geels, F. W., Kern, F., Markard, J., Onsongo, E., Wieczorek, A., … & Wells, P. (2019). An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 31, 1-32.
McCluskey, M. and L. Seaber (eds). (2020). Aviation in the Literature and Culture of Interwar Britain. Palgrave Macmillan.
McNees, E. (2010). “Public Transport in Woolf’s City Novels: The London Omnibus”. In E. F. Evans and S. C. Cornish (eds), Woolf and the City. Liverpool UP: 31-39.
Ryghaug, M., Subotički, I., Smeds, E., von Wirth, T., Scherrer, A., Foulds, C., … & Wentland, A. (2023). A Social Sciences and Humanities research agenda for transport and mobility in Europe: key themes and 100 research questions. Transport Reviews, 43(4), 755-779.
Salazar, N. B. (2013). Imagining Mobility at the “End of the World.” History and Anthropology, 24(2), 233–252.
Sheller, M. (2015). Racialized mobility transitions in Philadelphia: connecting urban sustainability and transport justice. City & Society, 27(1), 70-91.
European Union Agency for Railways (ERA). (2018). Final report on Facilitation of Combined Transport. https://www.era.europa.eu/content/final-report-facilitation-combined-transport_en (Accessed 11 February 2025).
European Union Agency for Railways (ERA). (2022). Game Changer for Carbon Neutral Economy. https://www.era.europa.eu/system/files/2022-11/game_changer_for_carbon_neutral_economy_presentation_en.pdf (Accessed 11 February 2025).
Global Rail Review. (2024). https://www.globalrailwayreview.com/article/169874/women-transport/ (Accessed 11 February 2025).
UNESCO. (2011). Recommendation on Historic Urban Landscape. https://whc.unesco.org/en/hul/
United Nations (UN). (2022). “Sustainable Development Goals”. https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/sustainable-development-goals/
- Adam Borch, Åbo Akademi University:
Stimulating A Modal Shift from Plane to Train: Findings from Literary Tourism, Slow Tourism and Railway Tourism - Nirali Joshi, Åbo Akademi:
On edge - Mikko Manka, Tampere University:
The Railway Beyond the Frame: Interrail Photography and Relational Railway Space, 1972–1993 - Jason Finch, Åbo Akademi:
Across the Tracks in Twentieth-Century African American Literature and Culture: Rail Vicinity Term as Urban Imaginative Border - Zeynep Ceren Correia, Åbo Akademi University:
Human Agency at the Near Point of Bike-Train Multimodality
Janette Kotivirta (University of Helsinki)
Vivian Price (California State University, Dominguez Hills and University of Helsinki)
Anna Korpikoski (Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors JHL, University of Helsinki)
End Coal! Growing awareness of climate change led to international campaigns to phase out coal. In Finland, the local branches of Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and others mobilized public support to shut down coal plants in the capital. In 2021 the City of Helsinki announced the decision to end coal use and close the Hanasaari power plant even earlier than originally planned. The municipal utility abruptly outsourced a notable part of its workforce, and unions were unprepared to respond, lacking preparation to make demands for a just transition. The workers resented the actions while the environmentalists were pleased with the cut in emissions. There had been no communication between them. What if there had been?
This film project is a collaboration with the Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors (JHL) and environmental groups to explore the tensions, contradictions and unity between environmentalist and labour perspectives through film. Documenting the story of the closure of the Hanasaari coal power plant in Helsinki, the film asks what role could workers and unions play in determining a transition away from fossil fuels?
With an approach informed by praxis, video dialogue is a participatory visual method that elicits and records thoughts from diverse actors, letting different realities and actors encounter each other through film, reflection, and later through discussion. Through this method, the project aims to bring union members and environmental civil society actors together, with the short film as a means to understand each other’s perspectives and foster a deeper exchange.
This session invites scholars to take part in the video dialogue method through a viewing of the short film “Oppitunteja Hanasaaresta” (2026, 18 min, Finnish with English subtitles) and facilitated discussion to reflect on the role of labour within environmental politics and environmental social sciences.
No application required. Participation is dependent on the availability of seats in the screening room.
Questions regarding the session can be addressed to corresponding convenor Janette Kotivirta (janette.kotivirta@helsinki.fi).
Janette Kotivirta (University of Helsinki)
Ville Kellokumpu (University of Oulu)
Vivian Price (California State University, Dominguez Hills and University of Helsinki)
Anna Korpikoski (Trade Union for the Public and Welfare Sectors JHL, University of Helsinki)
Labour’s role has been increasingly explored as a key actor in the midst of the ecological crisis (Feltrin, 2026). Varying from ecomodernist accounts (Huber, 2022) to ones advocating for “wages for earthwork” (Temin, 2025) labour’s centrality can no longer be dismissed. Offering a counterforce to the “transition from above” (Leonardi & Feltrin, 2025), scholars argue, a just ecological transition would need to center the demands of the working class. When capital is shaping and constructing the environment (Battistoni, 2025; Barca, 2024) according to its own image, the spectrum of workplaces ranging from the factory, the
plantation to the service sector and the home become battlegrounds for more ecologically just futures.
This session recenters workers and unions as potential strategic actors in the context of the climate crisis. It further asks why labour and the working class are almost entirely absent from the analytical register of Finnish environmental social science (Lempinen et al. 2025; Kellokumpu, 2025). We aim to develop this connection in conversation with the growing international scholarship exploring the contradictory nature of workers’ ecological agency and the labour movement’s environmental tendencies.
By combining theory, grassroots organizing and union practice, the session also asks what kind of changes and accommodations would be needed on the part of organized labour itself in order for it to have a role in advancing more just futures globally?
The session is open to proposals from scholars, organizers, activists and unions alike and accepts presentations that go beyond the regular academic paper format.
We invite proposals on the following non-exhaustive topics:
● Ecological agency of workers and unions (and NGOs where relevant)
● Entanglements of labour, nature and imperialism
● The changing role of unions in the time of ecological catastrophe
● Role of labour in degrowth/Tensions between labour and degrowth
● Political economy and labour environmentalism
● Trade union organizing and labour organizing experiences with/around environmental actors and issues
● Social Reproduction and the environment
Please send your paper proposal (abstract of max. 250 words) to the corresponding convenor Janette Kotivirta (janette.kotivirta@helsinki.fi) by 15 September 2026. Include the subject line “YHYS abstract 2026”.
References
Barca, S. (2024). Workers of the Earth : labour, ecology and reproduction in the age of climate change, Pluto Press.
Battistoni, A. (2025). Free gifts : capitalism and the politics of nature, Princeton University Press.
Feltrin, L. & Leonardi, E. (2023). Working-class environmentalism and climate justice : Strategic converging for an ecological transition from below. RELAÇÕES INTERNACIONAIS Special Issue, 49-061. https://doi.org/10.23906/ri2023.sia05
Feltrin, L. (2026). Workers and the world : fighting ecological crisis from within. . Verso.
Huber, M. T. (2022). Climate change as class war : building socialism on a warming planet.. Verso.
Lempinen, H., Parks, V., & Korpikoski, A. (2025). Unions, fossil fuel workers, and the energy transition: learning from plant closures in Finland and the US. Climate Policy, 1-13.
Kellokumpu, V. (postdoctoral researcher). (2025). “Environmental awareness fails to reach the working class.” Maj and Tor Nessling Foundation https://nessling.fi/en/postdoctoral-researcher-ville-kellokumpu-environmental-awareness-fails-to-reach-the-working-class/
Temin, D. M. (2015). Wages for Earthwork. The American Political Science Review, 119(1), 179–192. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055424000066
