HSSH September Newsletter 9/22

Summer is behind us and we have many, exciting news and upcoming events for the academic year 2022-2023.
  • Brown Bag Seminar every Tuesday at 12.15 – next session with Eetu Mäkelä on 6.9.
  • Reminder: The academic leadership and career planning course continues - Apply now!
  • CFP: 8th international Power Conference Helsinki, November 24-26, 2022
  • Methodological support for AoF and ERC applications from HSSH
  • HSSH workshop for HorizonEurope application support – apply now!
  • HSSH Visiting Professors are arriving in Helsinki
  • HSSH collaborations with SOAS and VOX-Pol network

 

Brown Bag Seminar every Tuesday at 12:15 – next session with Eetu Mäkelä on 6.9.

 

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

The events are resuming after a summer break on 6.9. as hybrid events. You’re warmly welcome to join us at the HSSH Seminar Room, Vuorikatu 3, 2nd floor, 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 Tuesday at 12.15. The next meeting features Eetu Mäkelä who will talk about overcoming the challenges of data-centric qualitative and quantitative research.

Bring your own lunch, we bring fresh methodological topics!

Read more about the event on our website!

 

Reminder: The academic leadership and career planning course continues - Apply now!

 

The course has been a success and will be arranged again in the upcoming academic year. Send your application now!

Helsinki institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH) and HYMY Doctoral School offer an interdisciplinary academic leadership and career planning course. The course is targeted to post-doctoral researchers who are launching their independent researcher career after earning the PhD. and building their own research group.

The course has been successfully held in the academic years 2020-21 and 2021-22. The organizers received valuable feedback from the participants to develop the course. For the upcoming academic year approximately 20 participants will be enrolled, representing a wide disciplinary range of social sciences and humanities. A constructive, interdisciplinary working environment will be provided and a wide range of expertise to support your efforts. The course will bring together people from all faculties of the central campus. Participants will be selected by the coordinating group on HSSH.

Tools for better leadership and research

The purpose of the academic leadership and career planning course is to help researchers to develop their leaderships skills and strategic planning of research themes. Furthermore, the course provides help for assembling a good research group, and to take full use of the research services and infrastructure of the University of Helsinki.

During the course, the group will discuss for instance career trajectories, strategic mapping of research horizons, project management, social impact issues and publication strategies, data management, and research ethics. Guest speakers will link these practical matters to discussing the larger thematic horizons of social sciences and humanities, such as well-being, climate change challenges, datafication, security, and cultural interaction. An attempt will be made to highlight themes according to researchers’ personal research interests.

When: Fridays at 10-15 over the coming academic year (2022-2023)

Autumn term: Oct 14, Nov 11, Dec 9

Spring term: Feb 3, March 3, April 14

Deadline for applications is September 9, 2022 15:00. Fill the application form here!

Read more about experiences on the previous courses here and here (in Finnish).

 

CFP: 8th international Power Conference Helsinki, November 24-26, 2022

 

It has become increasingly clear that we live in a complex turmoil of global challenges and intertwined crises. Global geopolitical divisions have sharpened from proxy conflicts to an all out war in Europe. Past years of pandemic lockdowns have underscored the vulnerability of interdependent societies. Economic futures are blurred and unpredictable. The world is consciously gambling on environmental sustainability, with odds against us. Meanwhile, rapidly advancing datafication and algorithmically driven information flows reshape the logics of social interaction, practices of legacy institutions, and opinion formation. Intersecting inequalities polarize political debates and create clashing camps both locally and globally. This conjuncture demands us to rethink questions of power, governance, authority and agency. In what ways do governments, corporations, political parties, social movements, and citizens shape the future? What do we know about the dynamics of these trends? How can scholarship make sense of them? What does the future look like?

These questions will be discussed in the 8th Power Conference, which will take place at the University of Helsinki, November 24-26, 2022

The three intensive days will include keynote talks by: 

  • Gianpaolo Baiocchi (New York University)  
  • Mark Haugaard  (National University of Ireland) 
  • Suvi Salmenniemi (University of Turku) 

Several streams of paper sessions will provide participants a chance to present their work and engage in intensive discussions with colleagues. We invite scholars from all fields of inquiry to propose presentations of themes such as (but not restricted to)

  • violence and war 
  • political movements and new of forms of engagement 
  • international organizations and global consultancy 
  • comparative studies on policy processes 
  • inequalities, social classes (inside and across nations) 
  • politics of affect 
  • dataficaton and new infrastructures of power 
  • the role of science, knowledge and expertise 
  • new media and communication environments and platforms  
  • new conceptualizations of power and elites 

We invite abstracts for presentations and special thematic sessions (max 300 words) beginning from July 10, 2022. The organizing committee will assess the submissions on a running basis. We will send notifications for acceptance within three weeks of reception.  

The final deadline for submissions is September 30, 2022 (with final notifications by October 15).

Submit your abstract here: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/118691/lomake.html

Registration fees: Standard €200; graduate students €100.

Power Conference 2022 is organized by University of Helsinki and the Society for the Study of Power Relations

For more information and all questions please email: Risto Kunelius, University of Helsinki risto.kunelius@helsinki.fi) and cc: anna.jarske-fransas@helsinki.fi

Welcome!

 

Methodological support for AoF and ERC applications from HSSH

 

The Helsinki Institute for Social Sciences and Humanities (HSSH) offers methodological support on the ERC and Academy of Finland calls for applicants from the University of Helsinki City Centre Campus.  

The support is available in September at the weekly virtual Friday Coffee events starting on 2.9.2022. Depending on the number of participants at the events, the staff of the HSSH Methodological Unit will be available for confidential, one-on-one break-out-room discussions on the methodological questions of the applications. 

In case of high demand, the support will be provided in the order of preregistrations. Group-based discussion for applicants with similar questions are also an option. Please let us know at preregistration whether you would need one-on-one support or whether you would agree to join a group-based discussion. The preregistration form is available here

The Friday Coffee events are organised in zoom every Friday at 14-15 throughout the academic year and you are welcome to discuss any methodological issues. The events are organised conjointly by the HSSH and the Centre for Social Data Science (CSDS).

 

HSSH workshop for HorizonEurope application support – apply now!

 

HSSH is organizing a support project for PI’s who are planning submit proposals for the 2023 HorizonEurope calls.

We are looking for experienced scholars with a solid track record on their specific field to take part in pilot project that aims to enhance successful applications for consortium coordinators for collaborative research and innovation projects (Pillar 2: Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness).

A full consortium Horizon application demands gathering and organizing an international consortium, with minimum of three institutional partners with a functional combination of expertise.

The grant package includes:

· 2-3 month salary costs for a post-doctoral researcher to support the coordination of the consortium and the writing work of the proposal

· support for organizing a meeting for 3-4 key international partners of the planned consortium (in Helsinki, during 2022)

· series of workshops (October 2022 – February 2023) with other PIs and experts

”Successful applications demand considerable investment of time and intellectual work from applicants and their research groups. In order to encourage people to commit to this, we are testing these new support grants. We hope to engage PI’s from different faculties to work together to build excellent applications and help us develop the support model,” says HSSH director Risto Kunelius.

Deadline for short applications is 16.9.2022. Read more and fill out the application form here: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/118881/lomake.html

 

HSSH Visiting Professors are arriving in Helsinki

 

The first round of applications for the HSSH Visiting Professor programme was open in early 2022 and a good number of applications that were well-thought-out and deserving of funds, were received.

The funding decisions were made based on the applications, and five one-year visitations and four three-year visitations will be funded after the first round. The applicants’ knowledge varies from Media Studies to study of religions, and a variety of methodological knowledge.

Most of the visiting proferssors’ schedules are confirmed and the first visitors will arrive to the City Centre Campus of the University of Helsinki in September. The visits will include public lectures and talks in our weekly Brown Bag Seminar. More information on these events will be posted on our website soon.

Read more about the Visiting Professors and check the schedules of the visits here.

 

HSSH collaborations with SOAS and VOX-Pol network

 

HSSH is collaborating with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, on a new initiative on datafication and AI. The Centre for AI Futures at SOAS is unique globally in its exclusive focus on the implications of AI in countries of Africa, Asia and the Middle East. The centre brings together the theoretical, methodological and philosophical expertise at HSSH with regional expertise at the School of Law, Gender and Media (SLGM) at SOAS and i​​ndustry expertise in data analysis and machine learning by Quilt.ai.

HSSH has also become a member in the VOX-Pol network.  VOX-POL is a world-leading network focused on researching the prevalence, contours, functions, and impacts of violent online political extremism and responses to it.

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