HSSH September Newsletter 9/2023

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

 

Subscribe to the Friends of HSSH mailing list

 

Anyone interested in the HSSH's activities can join the e-mail list that forms the so-called Friends of HSSH community. The e-mail list provides information on HSSH news and other current affairs, events, as well as research and research infrastructure related to the SSH field.

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Brown Bag Seminar every Tuesday at 12.15 – next session with Riikka Rossi on 3.10.

 

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, Vuorikatu 3, 2nd floor, 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 Tuesday at 12.15. In the next meeting on 3.10. Riikka Rossi will talk about culture-specific emotions and literature. Bring your own lunch, we bring fresh methodological topics!  

Read more about the event on our website!

 

HSSH Catalyst Grant 2024 Call Open Now  

 

The mission of the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH) is to enhance methodological development, build new research infrastructures and support multidisciplinary research networks at the University of Helsinki. One element in this work is the HSSH Catalyst Grant, a yearly round of open support for research groups at the City Centre Campus. The call for the HSSH Catalyst Grant 2024 is now open and the deadline for applications is October 4th, 2023.

Decisions for the 2024 grants will be prepared by a working group led by the director of HSSH. Funding decision will be announced on November 15th, 2023.

All funding must be used before November 30, 2024.

The Catalyst Grant provides modest but strategical support to existing and emerging research groups. Groups can apply support for a variety of needs, ideas and cooperative initiatives. These may, for instance, include support for: 

  • Acquiring necessary technological devices and systems that support the shared research infrastructure at UH, particularly in the City Centre Campus, 
  • Collecting new data that benefits several research initiatives, 
  • Enabling wider and sustainable use of infrastructures that have been developed organically in research groups (e.g. data, software) 
  • Initiating innovative and cooperative projects that open new insights, relationships and aim at publishing such ideas, 
  • Building new national and international networks.

We also encourage applicants to suggest ideas other than the ones sketched above. The evaluation process pays particular attention to the following criteria: testing and developing new ideas, reaching for multidisciplinarity, the feasibility of suggested action, and promise of added value for other researchers in the SSH field (beyond the applying research group).

 

Eligibility

All existing and emerging research groups working in the field of Social Sciences and Humanities at the City Centre Campus can apply for the grant. The Principal Investigator (PI) of the application must be affiliated with one of the partner units of HSSH (Faculty of Arts and Humanities, Faculty of Education,  Faculty of Law, Faculty of Social Sciences, Faculty of Theology, Swedish School of Social Sciences, Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies).

The grant is primarily directed to initiatives that enforce multidisciplinary networking, co-operation between UH research groups or initiating new research groups. Several research groups are encouraged to apply together for shared purposes.

 

Further inquiries

HSSH University researcher Heta Moustgaard, heta.moustgaard@helsinki.fi

 

Read more and fill the application here.

Read more about previously funded projects here.

 

HSSH Visiting Professor Program is open for applications 

 

The mission of HSSH is to support multidisciplinary research, cross-faculty cooperation and methodological development at the City Center Campus. In order to support this, we invite proposals for HSSH Visiting Professor positions for 2024. 

The program aims to support international research networks at the city center campus. All HSSH-affiliated research groups can propose candidates. We are seeking visiting professors that will catalyze research group cooperation inside the university of Helsinki by serving more than one research group and enhance interdisciplinary debates and help. 

The Visiting Professor Program includes a minimum of two weeks per year present at the City Centre Campus in Helsinki. The application is submitted by a PI at the University Helsinki City Centre Campus supported by another PI from a different research group. The PIs have an important role in hosting the visiting professors and acting as a strong point of contact between the Visiting Professor and the research group.

The visiting professors receive a compensation as well as funding for travel and accommodation fees. For more information on the Visiting Professor Program, contact Pekka Mäkelä pekka.a.makela@helsinki.fi 

The yearly call for applications is open until October 31, 2023. 

Send your application via this e-form.

 

4.10.2023 New Research Culture lecture with Visiting Professor Barbara Pfetsch (Freie Universität Berlin): Local movement activism and digital mobilization in environmental conflicts –  processes of scaling

 

Wednesday 4.10.2023 15:00-17-00 at HSSH, Vuorikatu 3, 2nd floor and Zoom

How is local movement communication and activists’ digital mobilization related to the national and global levels of the environmental movement? This question relates to processes of scaling which are at the core of a study investigating the digital connections of a local environmental conflict in Germany. Protest against a coal mining project emerged as local inhabitants and movement activists contested the destruction of villages and complete deforestation that they believed to violate climate change policies. The research focuses on the conditions and pattern that emerge when movement communication on the ground is scaled up in digital spaces.

We look at bottom-up communication of activists who use digital platforms to connect to the national and global environmental movement in order to extend their protest. We also study to what degree the activists use digital platforms to connect to local contention in order to organize resistance on the ground. Theoretically we bring together the concept of scaling from social movement research (Tarrow/Mc Adam 2005), connective action (Bennett/Segerberg 2012) and the research of geographies of contentious politics (Davies and Featherstone 2017).

Barbara Pfetsch is a Professor of Communication Theory and Media Effects Research at the Department of Media and Communication at the Freie Universität Berlin, Germany and principal investigator at the Weizenbaum Institute for the Networked Society. She is also involved in the Collaborative Research Centre “Re-Figuration of Spaces” (SFB 1265) at the TU Berlin. Her research focuses on changes of public spheres and political communication through the digitization and transnationalization and her projects include analyses of digital spaces issue networks, political discourse, (online) media debates and agenda building and the emergence of European and transnational public spheres.

 

Fourth Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism and Polarised Politics (HEPP4) – Register by 30.9!

 

The fourth edition of the Helsinki Conference on Emotions, Populism, and Polarization (HEPP4) is scheduled to take place from December 11th to 13th, 2023, at the University of Helsinki. But that's not all! In a thrilling development, HEPP4 is expanding its reach further North. You can join us for a Post-Conference Symposium Day in Lapland, scheduled for December 14th, 2023, at the University of Lapland. Find out more here: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/emotions-populism-and-polarised-politics-media-and-culture/hepp4

Registration for non-presenting participants is open until 20.11.

We are delighted to announce an impressive line-up of keynote speakers, featuring Benjamin De Cleen, Mercedes Barros, and Hande Eslen Ziya. To learn more about these keynote speakers, please visit: Meet Our Keynote Speakers

For HEPP4, we are expanding the theme of populist mobilization to encompass the growing influence of ethno-nationalism. Additionally, we aim to investigate the rise of religious populism, the formation of epistemic communities, and the dynamics of data-driven communication in relation to polarization. This latter aspect is drawn from our project on the Datafication of Society at the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (PROFI).

To learn more about our Datafication Project, please visit: Datafication Research Program 

 

Methods Clinic by HSSH and CSDS every Friday at 14.00

  

Wel­come to the Methods Clinic by HSSH and CSDS!

Experts at the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH) and the Centre for Social Data Science (CSDS) offer easy access methodological consultation at a Methods Clinic every Friday from 2:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. on Zoom. Use the e-form to book your consultation time by the preceding Monday. Feel free to pop in at the Methods Clinic even without a specific consultation need! 

 

Overview

The Clinic offers easy access methodological consultation for researchers in the fields of humanities and social sciences for:  

  • planning research projects  
  • collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data   
  • use of laboratory equipment, cameras, other tools for data collection and analysis  
  • visualisation of data and results   
  • interpretation of the results  

The consultation takes place on Zoom and is personal or group-based depending on need.  

Please note that if your need for consultation has a tight schedule (for example, a funding application deadline), you should get in touch well in advance. Funding application deadlines (e.g. early autumn) can make the clinic crowded. The service is free of charge for the moment. Consultation is provided in Finnish and English.  

Please contact us in the early phase of your research to get the most out of our support service! 

 

Target group

The Methods Clinic is primarily aimed at researchers and research groups at the City Centre Campus of University of Helsinki. Undergraduate students can only be offered consultation in special cases. 

 

Operating principles

The Methods Clinic offers support and consultation at a low threshold, but to a limited extent. The service is advisory in nature and the purpose is for researchers to analyze their own data. If an expert provides a significant contribution to a scientific publication, for example in the form of planning, analyses, interpretation of results or writing parts of the publication, it is advisory that they are included as a co-author of the publication.

 

Black History Month at the University of Helsinki

 

AfriStadi is organising a series of events in October 2023 to celebrate Black History Month. The events provide a platform for disseminating societally relevant Africa research in Finland and the Nordic countries, combating widely held negative stereotypes on Africa through fact-based dissemination events and through showcasing the contributions of African Diaspora members to society and knowledge production in Finland and the Nordic countries.  

BHM is an annual event celebrating African Americans since 1926 in the US, where it is held in February. The festival is also established in the UK and Ireland, where it takes place in October. We are organising a public event series at the University of Helsinki and cultural institutions in Helsinki.

Read more by clicking here.

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