HSSH May Newsletter 5/2025

Recent news and upcoming events at HSSH – read more below and don't forget to subscribe to our newsletter!

 

International Experts Visit HSSH as Part of Ongoing Evaluation Process 

 

Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH) is currently undergoing an external evaluation during the 2024–2025 academic year. The process, based on feedback from collaborators and faculty committees, is designed to assess the institute’s activities and shape its future directions. A key moment in the evaluation took place on 28-29th of April 2025, when an international panel of esteemed scholars visited the University of Helsinki’s City Centre Campus. 

The evaluation panel consists of Professor Richard Rogers (University of Amsterdam), Professor Kirsten Drotner (University of Southern Denmark) who were present at the campus in Helsinki, and Professor Alis Oancea (University of Oxford), who joined the visit remotely. During their time on campus, the panel engaged in a series of structured discussions with a wide range of university actors, gathering impressions and insights to shape the final evaluation report, to be completed by the end of May. 

The visit began on Monday 28th with a meeting between the evaluation panel and HSSH staff. After a brief introduction and welcome by HSSH Director Risto Kunelius, the evaluators took the lead. Through thoughtful and probing questions, they initiated a rich and multifaceted dialogue that covered both practical and strategic dimensions of the institute’s work. Despite the short timeframe, the discussion quickly delved into the heart of HSSH’s operations, identity, and ambitions. 

Following a brief and collegial coffee break, the HSSH staff gave way to the institute’s Board, comprising faculty deans and heads of independent units. The evaluators continued their inquiry, gaining a broad view of how HSSH is seen from different corners of the university. 

Early in the morning of Tuesday 28th, HSSH’s Project Planner Pentti Henttonen presented the Interlab project, followed by a joint presentation on the Helsinki Citizen Barometer by HSSH’s University Researcher Sointu Leikas and Professor Åsa von Schoultz.

A separate session at Metsätalo offered the evaluators the opportunity to hear from infrastructure and research committee representatives, as well as scholars who have engaged with the institute. The conversation highlighted concrete benefits enabled by HSSH’s support – an encouraging signal of the institute’s impact. 

Later in the day, the panel met with Vice-Rector Anne Portaankorva and had a discussion with University Services. Topics here included the institutional relationship between HSSH and university administration, internal communication, HSSH’s role in faculty-level decision-making, and the implications of the upcoming cluster model reform. 

In the final session, the evaluators reunited with the HSSH team – around the same table where the visit had begun just 24 hours earlier. The atmosphere was both focused and reflective, as each evaluator shared initial thoughts and key takeaways from the visit. Themes such as institutional identity, sustainability, and structural development were discussed. The evaluators also offered suggestions for future funding models and emphasized the value of the intellectual culture HSSH has cultivated – one that supports interdisciplinarity through a strong backbone in digital and computational methods, while remaining inclusive of qualitative and humanistic approaches.  

As Professor Rogers put it, HSSH is an example of “interdisciplinarity with an intellectual backbone.” The institute’s capacity to operate as a network and foster a shared culture of collaboration was noted as a key strength. 

The visit, though brief, was described as “fruitful and full,” with the evaluators remarking on the remarkable variety of perspectives they encountered. Throughout the visit, the tone remained warm and constructive, with a dash more formality than is typical for HSSHgatherings – a reflection of the significance of the moment.  

The external evaluation continues to mark an important milestone in the institute’s journey, offering not just feedback but inspiration for the future. The external panel will submit their report by the end of May. 

 

Can Human Solidarity Survive Social Media? Nick Couldry on the Politics of Digital Space

 

HSSH Visiting Professor Nick Couldry (LSE) delivered a timely lecture on the risks of platform-driven communication and the urgent need for alternative digital futures.

“Can human solidarity survive social media — and what if it can’t?”

That was the important question raised by Professor Nick Couldry (London School of Economics and Political Science) in his lecture organized by Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH) on the 9th April, 2025.

Drawing from his latest book The Space of the World (Polity, 2024), Couldry explored how today’s commercial digital platforms do more than mediate our interactions – they fundamentally reshape the space of global human communication. In an ecosystem where tech companies profit from data extraction and behavioral manipulation, even “the social air we breathe,” as Couldry puts it, is turned into a commodity.

The consequences are stark: a digital space that is increasingly polarized, intense, and toxic – and poorly suited to the solidarity and cooperation humanity needs to confront its greatest collective challenges.

Couldry’s talk not only diagnosed the problem, but also pointed toward possible alternatives. He invited the audience to imagine more just and supportive digital futures — and consider how these could be advanced, even as tech regulation becomes a tool in global geopolitical struggles.

The event drew a full room and sparked a lively and thoughtful discussion, underscoring the timeliness and urgency of the topic.

The lecture was organized by HSSH, with warm thanks to the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies for generously providing the venue in their beautiful Common Room.

The Space of the World is available from Polity. Use the code NC30 on their website for a 30% discount.

 

27.5.2025 HSSH seminar on VR methodology

 

15:00-18:00

In this interdisciplinary seminar we will have a look at innovative ways in which virtual reality (VR) technology has been employed to enhance research, teaching and public engagement within the humanities and social sciences. Increasingly sophisticated and accessible VR methods offer novel opportunities for investigating social and cultural phenomena, also at UH centre campus. We will explore theoretical frameworks, practical implementations, and ethical considerations of utilizing VR with five presentations by scholars familiar with applications of these state-of-the-art methods in their fields. 

Join us and get inspired!

LOCATION AND REGISTRATION:

Seminar room 524, Fabianinkatu 24 A (access via door, not courtyard), 5th floor.

Online participation possible, zoom link upon registration. Event is targeted for UH Centre Campus researchers, but everyone is welcome. Please sign up at: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/135365/lomake.html

PROGRAMME:

15:00-15:30  Rūta Kazlauskaitė (Faculty of Social Sciences, UH)

VR as a Technology of Political Communication and Grievance Politics

15:30-16:00  Omkaranathan Ravindran (Department of Geosciences and Geography, UH)

VR Environments in an Urban Context: Cycling Experiment

16:00-16:30 Anna Vatanen (Department of Finno-Ugrian and Scandinavian Studies, UH)

Applying VR and 360°-video in studying multi-layered social interaction 

16:30-17:00 30 minutes power break

17:00-17:30 Anton Berg (Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities, UH)

Investigating Predictive Neural Processing in VR

17:30-18:00  Ville Harjunen (Department of Psychology, Faculty of Medicine, UH) 

Embodied Realities: Leveraging Multimodal VR for Social Neuroscience and Psychological Research

ONLINE

 

More information:

Pentti Henttonen

Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH)

+358504491284

pentti.henttonen@helsinki.fi

 

21.5. From data to research - How to make use of the materials of Finna, the National Archives and the National Library of Finland? (12:30-15:30 Teams, only in Finnish!) 

 

The National Archives, the National Library of Finland and Finna offer massive amounts of digital materials for research use. This opens up new opportunities for research and researchers, for example those using or interested in data-intensive methods. This information event will introduce the services and tools that facilitate access and ease use of cultural heritage digitized materials in research. See the full programme and stream link here.

 

Please note: the 21.5. event will be held in Finnish, but the same event will be held in English on 11.6.2025. Click here to see the event details.

 

27.5. Online workshop about the Finna API

 

Finna.fi is a search service that collects material (e.g., images, literature, journals, maps, objects, art, films) from hundreds of Finnish organizations under one roof. The renewed Finna API makes it possible to download thousands of high-resolution image files with their according metadata from one organization at a time.

In this online workshop, participants will (1) get to know about the Finna API and discover what they can do with it; (2) learn how to use the Finna API for their research; and (3) overall become familiar with the DARIAH-FI research infrastructure.

This workshop is free of charge, but it requires registration by May 12 (by 11:45 PM Helsinki), through the following link: https://forms.office.com/e/bXWXEc4Tdy

Prerequisites:
• Windows/Mac/Linux computer with an Internet connection and a web browser
• Participants must install Node.js (https://nodejs.org/en) on their computer before the start of the workshop
• Participants must be able to use the command prompt and web browser and understand how to navigate the file system during the workshop

About these prerequisites: A specific Node.js script has been created, this can use a Finna search made with a web browser to select the images wanted. This script downloads the image files with the highest resolution available in Finna. The Finna API requires an API key that users must create using a Finna account. This feature is coming in Autumn 2025 but, for now, researchers can ask Finna for a temporary API key. Participants will receive specific instructions and the url to the zoom session well in advance after registering to the workshop.

Preliminary programme:
10:00-10:15 Welcome and introduction by Anna Sendra Toset (Tampere University)
10:15-10:45 Walkthrough and hands-on assignment with the Finna API by Joona Manner (National
Library of Finland)
10:45-11:00 Feedback and general discussion

Language: English
Audience: The event is open to all, although it is particularly aimed at doctoral researchers
More information: anna.sendratoset@tuni.fi

This workshop is organised by Tampere University, in collaboration with the University of Helsinki and the National Library of Finland under the framework of the DARIAH-FI research infrastructure

 

27.5. Publication event: LetterSampo Finland – Finnish historical letters on the Semantic Web 1809-1917 (the event is in Finnish only)

 

This announcement is an open invitation to the publication event on May 27, 2025, of a new Sampo system, a Linked Open Data service and a semantic portal on top of it: “LetterSampo Finland: Finnish historical letters on the Semantic Web 1809-1917”. It contains data about 1.2 million letters sent in the Grand Duchy of Finland (1809-1917) and over 100,000 historical people, groups, and organizations. The event will be in Finnish but the portal UI is in English. More information and research publications about LetterSampo Finland in English and its predecessor, the international LetterSampo – Historical letters on the Semantic Web, can be found on the project web sites below:

https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/projects/rrl/

https://seco.cs.aalto.fi/projects/coco/

 

New Teams Hub for Recruiting Research Participants

 

Do you (try to) recruit research participants for your studies? Annette Horstmann and her colleagues from the Faculty of Medicine have just launched a new Microsoft Teams hub for research study announcements and participant recruitment at the University of Helsinki and you are welcome to join.

The Teams is called Get involved in Research.

You can join from within UH using the code: q7ihag2 (Teams > Join with a code)

Link: Get involved in Research | General | Microsoft Teams

Whether you’re recruiting participants or simply want to stay updated on ongoing studies, this is a shared space for researchers and the broader university community.

If you have ideas or suggestions for improving the space, feel free to get in touch!

Please help spread the word to colleagues, researchers, and students who might be interested!

 

STATA users! Do you need to use the BCH-correction in your latent modeling of longitudinal data (e.g. in multi-group growth modeling)? 

Thanks to UH researcher Lauren Bishop from Helsinki Institute for Demography and Population Health who contacted a team of US researchers with Stata expertise, an Excel macro, created by professor Adrienne Ohler, now exists that you can use for this purpose. You can find the macro here: https://github.com/adrienneohler/BCH-correction 

 

Valuable Resource for Mplus Users – Book and Data Files Now Online

 

Mplus users: The book “Regression And Mediation Analysis Using Mplus (Muthén, Muthén, and Asparouhov) is now available as pdf. The inputs, outputs, and data sets that can be shared are also available. You can find these materials here: https://statmodel.com/Mplus_Book.shtml

 

Brown Bag Seminar every Tuesday at 12.15 – next session with Fred Markowitz on 14.5.

 

The Methodological Unit of HSSH hosts a weekly event, Brown Bag Seminar, to highlight novel methodological approaches in humanities and social sciences. 

The seminars are organized as hybrid events. You’re warmly welcome to join us at the HSSH Seminar Room, Fabianinkatu 24 A, room 524, 5th floor (access via door, not courtyard due to renovations), or on Zoom.

Click here to add the Brown Bag Seminar events directly to your calendar (.ics file).

According to a researcher at the Methodological Unit, Matti Pohjonen, the idea of the meetings “is to introduce methodological innovations and cutting-edge research in various disciplines in an easily accessible manner and have an interdisciplinary discussion in an easy-going atmosphere over lunch.”

Every Wednesday at 12.15. On Wednesday 14.5. HSSH Visiting Professor Fred Markowitz (Northern Illinois University) will talk about “Mental Illness, Social Embeddedness, and Criminal Offending in Finland”.

Read more about the event on our website!

 

Welcome to Method and Convergence — International Conference on Methodology of Philosophy 2-4 June 2025, University of Helsinki, Finland

 

This conference brings together thinkers exploring philosophical methodology from different viewpoints. The focus is on the question of what kind of methodology could foster progress in philosophy, and on the question of how philosophy could foster progress in science. The conference will address these and other questions under the following themes:

  • Methodology and progress of philosophy in general
  • How can philosophy foster progress in science?
  • How can scientific methods foster progress in philosophy?
  • How can artificial intelligence foster progress in science and philosophy?
  • Forms of peer review bias and their resolutions

​​​​​Register now!

​​​​​​​Register to Method and Convergence 2025 Conference by filling the registration form by Wednesday, 21 May 2025.

Keynote speakers

The conference is organised by the research project Appearance and Reality in Physics and Beyond, located in the Department of Philosophy, History and Art Studies, at the University of Helsinki, in cooperation with Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities, Physics Foundations Society, Philosophical Society of Finland, The Finnish Society for Natural Philosophy, and The Finnish Society for the History of Science and Learning.

Click here to visit the conference website.

 

2.6. INEQ keynote with HSSH Visiting Professor Surinder S. Jodhka: Re-Cast(e)ing Ascription: Identities, Inequality and Democracy in India

 

Welcome to the INEQ keynote talk by Professor Surinder S. Jodhka (Centre for the Study of Social Systems, School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi and HSSH visiting professor at UH May-June 2025)

Re-Cast(e)ing Ascription: Identities, Inequality and Democracy in India

Date: Monday 2 June, 2025

Time: 14.15-15.45 

Format: Hybrid [Zoom link to be sent to all registered participants]

Location:  Metsätalo, room B214, Unioninkatu 40, 00170 Helsinki

Register here: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/134814/lomakkeet.html

Abstract: The promise of equal citizenship has been among the foundational values of democratic political regimes. With growing spheres of entitlements and welfareism, the past century saw a significant expansion in the scope and domains of citizenship. Even when economic disparities grew, the expanding realms of citizenship entitlements presumably enabled institutionalization of a regime of equal opportunities creating conditions for social and economic success in life for anyone willing to work hard and pursue the path of mobility. Indeed, the growth/development of modern-day industrial capitalist economic systems presumably marked a fading away of past hierarchies grounded in ascription and traditional cultures. The fact that they did not entirely disappear everywhere is generally viewed as evidence of incomplete or flawed execution of democracy and the market-driven capitalist economy.

Drawing from my work on the social and political life of caste in contemporary India, my presentation will attempt to provide a contrary view to this popular/modernist assumption and show how such a framing is largely embedded in a West/Euro-centric view of the world. My studies on the patterns of political participation of those located on the caste margins of Indian society and the making of their political agency show how democratic political processes are also shaped by local cultures and political histories, as are urban markets and capital processes. My work also shows that the explanation for such an apparent “deviation” does not lie in the popular Western framing of India as an exceptional place but rather in its recent history, particularly of the British colonial period. The patterns of democratic politics during the post-colonial period continue to be influenced by its foundational moment, i.e. the British colonial framework of engaging with “native” populations.

Besides my writings on caste in contemporary times, my presentation will draw from my ongoing work on the political sociology of community identities and the making of India’s elite as aspects of emergent structures of inequality. Finally, I would also argue that the Indian experience of persistent inequalities and their intersections with ascription and identity presents a broader theoretical promise for comparative work on the social life of democracy and political dynamics of contemporary capitalism.

Speaker bio: Professor Surinder S. Jodhka has received numerous honours and awards, including the Amartya Sen Award, which was conferred to him by the Indian Council of Social Science Research (2012). He was invited to deliver Radhakrishna Memorial Lectures at the University of Oxford in 2018. He also served as visiting professor and chair of the Indian Council of Cultural Relations at the University of Lund in Sweden between 2012-2013 and as visiting associate professor at the University of Bergen, Norway, in 2005. He researches different dimensions of social inequalities, contemporary caste dynamics, agrarian change, rural India, and the political sociology of community identities. His work has been published in Journals such as Economic and Political Weekly, Journal of Peasant Studies, Current Sociology, and Oxford Development Studies. He has authored/edited more than 20 books. His most recent books include The Oxford Handbook of Caste. OUP 2023 (edited with Jules Naudet); The Indian Village: Rural Lives in the 21st Century. Aleph 2023; India’s Villages in the 21st Century: Revisits and Revisions OUP 2019 (edited with Edward Simpson); Mapping the Elite: Power, Privilege, and Inequality. OUP 2019 (edited with Jules Naudet); Contested Hierarchies: Caste and Power in the 21st Century. Orient Blackswan 2018 (co-edited with James Manor). Inequality in Capitalist Societies. Routledge 2018 (co-authored with Boike Rehbien and Jesse Souza). The Indian Middle-Class OUP 2016 (co-authored with Aseem Prakash); Caste in Contemporary India Routledge 2015; Caste: Oxford India Short Introductions. OUP 2012. He is the editor of the Routledge India book series on ‘Religion and Citizenship’ and co-editor of the OUP book series on ‘Exploring India’s Elite’. 

Chair: 

Meri Kulmala, Research Director, INEQ

Commentators: 

Mandira Halder, Grant-funded researcher, Faculty of Social Science, University of Helsinki

Johanna Rainio-Niemi, Professor in Political History, University of Helsinki

Tiina Seppälä, University lecturer in Global development studies, University of Helsinki

 

Africa Programme Seed Funding for GAINS Project on Generative AI and Africa

 

University Researcher Matti Pohjonen from HSSH has received Africa Programme seed funding for his project “Generative AI and Africa: New Methodological Directions for Social Sciences and Humanities Research (GAINS)”. The project will be carried out in partnership with the University of Witwatersrand.

The GAINS project aims to leverage generative AI and large-language models (LLMs) for social sciences and humanities research in Africa. It addresses challenges like restrictive data access and the applicability of Western-developed AI models in African contexts. By experimenting with custom-trained AI models and fostering collaboration between Finnish and South African institutions, GAINS seeks to enhance research methodologies and facilitate knowledge exchange. This initiative builds on longstanding partnerships and aligns with the upcoming Chair in Digital Humanities at the University of the Witwatersrand.

 

 
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