Here you can find more information on the keynote speakers at the 2018 conference.
Katharine N. Farrell, Ph.D., is an ecological economist and political theorist whose work focuses on the political economy of knowledge in environmental governance. Her research interests are mainly theory related, with the support of case studies based in interdisciplinary and participatory environmental science situations. She holds affiliations with the Resource Economics Group and the Berlin Workshop in Institutional Analysis of Social-Ecological Systems at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and with L'Institut de Ciència i Tecnologia Ambientals at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.
Most recently she has begun collaborating with the Universidad del Magdalena, situated between the global biodiversity hotspot of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Ramsar wetlands Cienága Grande de Santa Marta, in Colombia, supporting its initiative to become an inclusive and innovative Third Generation University where inter- and transdisciplinarity serve the creation of social value. Internationally awarded Dr. Farrell is leading expert in ecological economics based critiques of the monetary valuation of ecological phenomena and in post-normal science theory and methodology.
Janne I. Hukkinen is professor of environmental policy at the University of Helsinki. He studies the cognitive aspects of sustainability assessment and strategy, with empirical applications in participation and expertise in environmental and technology policy. Hukkinen is a Member of The Finnish Society of Sciences and Letters, Editor of the journal Ecological Economics, and Expert Counsellor on the Environment for the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland. In addition to over 90 peer-reviewed scientific articles or book chapters, he is the author of Sustainability Networks (2008) and Institutions in Environmental Management (1999), both published by Routledge.
Dr Miles MacLeod is an Assistant Professor for Philosophy of Science in Practice at the University of Twente (Enschede, Netherlands). In 2010 he obtained his PhD in History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Vienna where he worked on the historical epistemic roles of theoretical entity concepts.
His expertise lies at the intersection of the natural sciences, the philosophy and of science and studies of scientific cognition. He is especially interested in cognitive and methodological aspects of interdisciplinary collaboration, in both modern biology and the environmental sciences, and the limits and affordances of current mathematical and computational approaches to modeling complex systems. He has published widely on interdisciplinary model-building practices in numerous domains. He is currently working on several projects connected to these themes, including one aimed at translating this research on interdisciplinarity into educational programs and tools.
Mari Pantsar, the Leader of the Carbon-neutral Circular Economy theme in Sitra (the Finnish Innovation Fund), is a highly experienced sustainability expert both in academic and in business world. In her current position she holds the responsibility for ensuring that all activities related to Carbon-neutral Circular Economy theme direct Finland towards a more ecologically sustainable and competitive society. Pantsar steers the new approaches and experiments that aim for circular and economically beneficial solutions that can tackle the complex sustainability challenges in Finland.
Pantsar holds 20 years' of managerial expertise in the development of cleantech and circular economy business in the private and public sector. During her career she has also been a member in several companies' and other organizations' boards, currently for example Pantsar is in Ahlström Capital Cleantech Management Ky and Smart and Clean Metropolitan Foundation boards. She has a doctorate in philosophy and holds the title of docent at the University of Helsinki in environmental chemistry and at Lappeenranta University of Technology in Cleantech chemistry.
Uskali Mäki is an internationally prominent researcher in Philosophy of Social Science and of Economics but his research involves also other areas of science as well as general issues in the study of science and its social relations. Mäki is Professor of Practical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki where he directs TINT - Centre for the Philosophy of the Social Sciences. He is Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa. He was Academy Professor at the Academy of Finland in 2006-2017. In 1995-2006 he was Professor of Philosophy at the Erasmus University of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, where he served as director of EIPE [Erasmus Institute for Philosophy and Economics].
He is a former editor of the Journal of Economic Methodology (1995-2005), and former Chair of the International Network for Economic Method. He sits in the editorial boards of twelve journals, and during his career he has held several visiting positions at different universities. Mäki’s areas of expertise beyond Philosophy of Social Science and of Economics include Interdisciplinarity, Models, Scientific Realism, Social Studies of Science, Social Ontology and Rhetoric of Inquiry. Right now he is engaged in a major editorial project in the philosophy of interdisciplinarity.