- 28.11. Save the date FIN-CLARIAH day "Annotating social data" (Krista Lagus)
Expert panel was discussing Europe’s future – Is sivistys/Bildung a pillar of EU competitiveness?
On Monday, September 22, HSSH director Risto Kunelius moderated a panel discussion with Elina Holmberg (Senior Director of EU collaborations, Business Finland), Gabi Lombardo (Director, EASSH), Jesse Maula (CEO, Ecobio), and Ville Niinistö (Member of European Parliament, former Minister of Environment of Finland) about the tensions between sivistys/bildung and the new EU research policy preparations.
The panel discussion took place in Helsinki Central Library Oodi’s Maijansali hall at 12:30-13:30 and was hosted by the European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities (EASSH) and its member universities in Finland: the University of Helsinki, the University of Eastern Finland, Turku University of Applied Sciences, the University of Turku, and the University of Oulu.
The Maijansali was relaxed as the audience and panellists arrived leisurely with a quiet lofi-music playing at the background. After short informal greetings, and everyone finding their own places, Kunelius gave a welcoming speech and opened the event. The theme of the discussion was to explore how the EU’s policy focus, centering for example on green transition and digitalization, is shifting towards new key concepts such as competitiveness, security, and defence, and what this shift means for social sciences and humanities (SSH). Kunelius introduced the concept of bildung (sivistys) as a 19th-century idea combining knowledge, ethics, responsibility, and self-critique. The aim of the panel discussion was to figure out what bildung could mean today.
Bildung vs competitiveness
The first part of the discussion addressed tensions between competitiveness and societal values, as well as a worry about SSH fields becoming limited to crisis management research.
Holmberg stressed that competitiveness must serve broader societal goals and cannot be separated from social impacts. She highlighted the role of critical thinking in an AI-driven world, arguing that well-educated citizens are key to safeguarding democracy.
Lombardo emphasized that SSH already underpins Europe’s service economy. According to her, the real question is not about the importance of SSH but the political question whether Europe wants to maintain its human-centric industrial model that is based on fairness and rule of law. She stressed the need for scaling up SSH funding in EU to address major challenges like migration and climate change.
Maula noted that SSH are important since the more complex the world is the more education we need just to keep peace in societies. Furthermore, solving big problems with innovation requires having highly educated people. On the other hand, Maula argued that Europe has an opportunity to lead in AI and green technologies as long as it becomes more attractive for companies around the world.
Niinistö warned that the rules-based international system is eroding and framed the challenge in current EU policy preparations as whether competitiveness will be interpreted narrowly or broadly to include environmental and societal concerns. He highlighted the need for more education that fosters skills AI cannot replace.
When it comes to science funding, panellists agreed that excellence should remain the basis for allocation and warned against political interference. Lombardo reminded that science is meant to create ecosystems for thinking, not provide instant solutions.
How to inject bildung into competitiveness
Kunelius asked the panellists how SSH experts can better integrate into industry and interdisciplinary projects. Maula and Niinistö noted that Finland lags behind countries like Sweden in embedding SSH expertise in business strategies. They both also emphasized that there is a clear demand for companies to understand the end customers’ social contexts and wider surroundings of their new technological implementations. SSH insights are essential for companies to be able to provide more human-centric end products as well as comprehensive solutions with complex societal entanglements (eg. ecocities).
Lombardo added that the integration of SSH hasn’t happened evenly across different fields. For example, she explained that the portion of SSH publications in environmental climate change research goes up to 7-8%, whereas in health and life sciences the number is around 0.05%. Lombardo also pointed out that SSH researchers themselves are partly to blame for the lack of integration. According to Lombardo, SSH researchers often hold prejudiced attitudes towards engineering fields and silently prefer staying in their isolation. As social scientists and humanists, we need to know what we bring to the table but also bring it, Lombardo encouraged.
Audience questions
Audience comments raised issues such as diversity of language and educational standards in EU and the importance of Nordic cooperation. One comment inquired whether bildung could be framed as a form of defence. Responses varied: Holmberg supported the idea, Maula worried that there is still no consensus of what bildung means, and Lombardo warned that many would not buy the story since the whole idea of an active knowledge society is under attack globally and being replaced by the ideas of compliance and resilience. Niinistö acknowledged the viability of the strategy but cautioned against reducing bildung entirely to defence rhetoric.
Other questions addressed funding biases and the misconception that critical thinking lacks economic value. Lombardo criticized outdated funding systems prevalent in all OECD countries and defended the importance of critical thinking. Critical thinking is always needed since even perfect systems can get things wrong and messy because they’ll always be ultimately managed by people, she noted.
At the end of the discussion, the panellists encouraged SSH communities to claim their rightful role in shaping Europe’s future. They urged SSH researchers and actors to engage in decision-making boards, influence actively in Brussels, and demonstrate why their research is important.
The Director of EASSH Gabi Lombardo visited the University of Helsinki
The Director of the European Alliance for Social Sciences and Humanities (EASSH) Gabi Lombardo visited the University of Helsinki on Tuesday September 23. HSSH (Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities) facilitated two discussion events, inviting participants from all EASSH member universities in Finland.At the event, we will discuss the strengths of Finnish humanities and social sciences research in the European context, as well as how we can strengthen the funding and significance of this research in both Finland and the EU.
The morning event Get to know EASSH was attended by faculty and research leadership from the fields of social sciences and humanities (SSH) of the member universities. During the event, Lombardo presented EASSH's activities, as well as current updates and issues related to ongoing political discussions shaping the EU's future research funding programs (2028–2034). The event also addressed how university leadership can influence science policy. Lombardo encouraged SSH leaders to actively participate in science policy discussions and decision-making through various methods and channels. She emphasized that science policy is a shared interest for universities and should be advanced strategically.
In the afternoon, an open event New direction for social sciences and humanities: Finnish SSH-expertise at the center of Europe was held for SSH researchers. At the beginning of the event, Lombardo introduced EASSH's activities and discussed the future prospects of SSH fields in the context of EU policy. Lombardo highlighted that a key interest for SSH fields in the ongoing planning of EU funding programs is to convince EU policymakers that the funding in the "Society" section of the planned Horizon Europe funding instrument’s Pillar 2 should be specifically allocated to SSH research. The amount of funding directed toward SSH fields during the EU’s next research funding period will significantly depend on this straightforward interpretation, which, unfortunately, is not guaranteed.
The afternoon event also featured three additional prepared speeches addressing the visibility, new initiatives, challenges, and influencing opportunities of SSH fields at the European level. Roger Norum (Professor of Cultural Anthropology, University of Oulu) presented Finnish SSH research as exotic and trendy within the European context. Maija Setälä (Professor of Political Science, University of Turku) expressed concern that SSH research in Finland is conducted on a much smaller scale compared to other Nordic countries and emphasized the need for better career paths for young researchers. Johanna Kantola (Professor of European Studies, University of Helsinki) shared her personal experience of how research can successfully influence EU policy, provided the right voice is heard in the right place. Additionally, Kantola reminded the audience of the importance of upholding and fostering European values such as gender equality and anti-racism, and she considered how the Finnish academic community could better safeguard academic freedom and the safety of researchers.
Jussi Varkemaa (Secretary General of the Scientific Council for Social Sciences and Humanities, Research Council of Finland) also gave a speech, explaining how the Research Council of Finland operates to influence EU funding policy. According to Varkemaa, for Finnish science policy to have an impact in Europe, it requires a unified voice, original contributions, and like-minded partners. On a positive note, he mentioned that research funding from the Research Council of Finland is increasing, which is significant for SSH fields, as they account for approximately 25% of the Council’s funding. However, with the increase in funding comes rising expectations and demands to demonstrate the societal impact of research. This is understandable and justified since the Research Council of Finland’s funding comes from taxpayers, Varkemaa noted. On a less positive note, he referred to the recent rise in public and hostile attacks against researchers and projects. Varkemaa emphasized that the Academy of Finland is prepared to actively defend researchers and academic freedom.
During the audience discussion, various questions, initiatives, practical strategies, and actions were raised. Some tensions were evident, such as concerns about the value of independent basic research and the diversity of perspectives within SSH fields. However, participants generally seemed to share a consensus that more active engagement in science policy is essential for SSH fields. This requires both a more unified front from SSH fields and better efforts to highlight and emphasize the societal significance of SSH research.
ReproducibiliTea Launches at Centre Campus with Support from HSSH
The ReproducibiliTea network officially launched at the City Centre Campus with the support of the Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH), hosted at Think Corner. The discussion at the event focused on the consequences of emphasizing performance metrics to the quality of research.
The ReproducibiliTea is a grassroots network focused on advancing open science and reproducibility of results.
28.11. Save the date FIN-CLARIAH day "Annotating social data" (Krista Lagus)
Helsinki Centre for Social Data Science invites to a day dedicated to examine current practices and future needs in annotating data sets in social sciences for further analysis. During this full-day event there will be talks by Salla-Maria Laaksonen, Katja Valaskivi and Krista Lagus; and three afternoon workshops and discussion groups around challenges and infrastructures for annotating and further processing social media, interview data or sensitive data. The event is an oportunity to inform future development of FIN-CLARIAH national infrastructure (
3.10. Urbaria Guest Lecture: Professor Yasminah Beebeejaun - Whose diversity? Race, space, and the European City
We warmly invite you to our Urbaria Guest Lecture seminar with Professor Yasminah Beebeejaun on the topic of "Whose diversity? Race, space, and the European City".
Yasminah Beebeejaun is a Professor of Urban Politics and Planning at Bartlett School of Planning, University College London. Her work is focused on questions of equality in urban planning and policy from an anti-racist and feminist perspective. She is one of the founding editors of the Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City published by the Urban Affairs Association and Taylor and Francis.
Abstract:
European cities have increasingly highlighted diversity as a marker of their progressive status. A significant field of research argues that “super-diverse” neighborhoods exemplify an increasing acceptance of ethnic and racial difference within urban space. However, contemporary manifestations of urban diversity cannot be easily disentangled from the Eurocentric colonial legacy that underlies racial and spatial imaginaries. The growing influence of Far Right political ideas has heightened existing tensions between European urban planning, legacies of colonial governmentality, and the ongoing devaluation of ethnic minority identities. In this talk I consider how white spatial imaginaries have historically underpinned ways of producing urban space, linking historical practices to contemporary policies, whereby racialized narratives have implicitly and explicitly blamed minorities for urban decline. Finally, I turn to how ethnic minority and marginalized spatial imaginaries open up new forms of understanding city building that can challenge racialized discrimination and inequality.
Welcome to join the discussion!
Brown Bag Seminar every Wednesday at 12.15 – next sessions with Thibaut Duthois on 1.10. (today!) and Terhi Utriainen & Oscar Ortiz-Nieminen on 8.10.
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.
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. Today, 1.10., Thibaut Duthois is giving a talk titled “Mobile eye-tracking as a window on inequity in children’s language development opportunities” and next week on Wednesday 8.10. Terhi Utriainen & Oscar Ortiz-Nieminen will talk about “Collaborating with art as an explorative methodology”.
University of Helsinki Data Support’s Research Data Management Basics autumn 2025 lectures
The lectures will go through the following topics: what is data, ethical & legal compliance, data documentation, storing solutions by UH IT Services, opening, publishing and archiving research data.
Call for papers: 23.–24.5. Finnish conference on grief (Surukonferenssi) in Tampere
Please note! The conference is in Finnish only.
The seventeenth National Grief Conference (Surukonferenssi) will be held in Tampere on April 23–24, 2026. The scientific sessions are intended to serve as a meeting place for researchers of grief and death and as a forum for presenting research on grief and death in Finland.
Paper proposals are invited on topics related to grief, support for the bereaved, or death studies more broadly. Research or research projects may be presented. Proposals should be submitted in the form of a short abstract (max. 300 words).
The call for papers will remain open until November 3, 2025. Notification of acceptance will be sent on November 21, 2025.
Proposals can be submitted here:
23.10. Autumn Seminar of the Finnish Death Studies Association: THANATOCENE NOW! Death and the Ecological Crisis
Thursday, 23 October 2025, 9:00–16:00, Tieteiden talo (Kirkkokatu 6), Helsinki
Welcome to the annual autumn seminar of the Finnish Death Studies Association (FDSA / Suomalaisen Kuolemantutkimuksen Seura, SKTS)! This year’s theme is “death and ecology.” The keynote speaker is Senior University Lecturer Dr Arnar Árnason from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland.
The keynote lecture of the seminar is open to everyone and requires no registration. For the rest of the seminar program,
Please register by 16 October 2025.
The 2025 seminar is organized in collaboration with Thanatos. Thanatos will publish a special issue on the seminar’s theme in 2026.