The event focused on the challenges and opportunities of current food production, which have been highlighted by climate change, economic challenges, and rising energy prices.
The Una Europa Summer School held in Helsinki gathered over 30 doctoral researchers and experts from Una Europa's 11 universities to discuss sustainable food production. The event focused on the challenges and opportunities of current food production, which have been highlighted by climate change, economic challenges, and rising energy prices.
The summer school approached the sustainability of food systems from multiple perspectives. Summer school teacher, Professor Lucia Mancini (Alma Mater Studiorum University of Bologna), emphasizes the significance of the ecological crisis as a threat to food production. "Agriculture not only accelerates the deepening of the ecological crisis but also suffers significantly from its effects. Therefore, finding common solutions is especially important," Lucia notes.
The diverse program of the summer school offered participants valuable insights and opportunities to develop new solutions for a more sustainable future. The summer school provided doctoral researchers with a broad array of scientific insights into topics such as consumption research, cellular agriculture, and policy from lecturers across Europe.
Tiia Kolari (University of Helsinki) and Patrycja Wachala (Jagiellonian University in Krakow) are enthusiastic about the interdisciplinary approach of the summer school, which offers them the opportunity to expand their own research work with new perspectives. Biology doctoral researcher Patrycja highlights the importance of the international environment, where the academic and personal backgrounds of different participants help see things in a new light. "Especially the social science perspective has enriched my understanding of the social factors affecting food systems. I see that our biggest challenge is to get societal decision-making and people to understand the seriousness of the issue," Patrycja reflects.
Doctoral researcher Tiia Kolari from the University of Helsinki studies farmers' perspectives on biodiversity and wants to deepen her understanding of the different dimensions of the food system. "For my research, it is important to understand which factors can affect my research and how I can utilize different perspectives," Tiia explains.
On the fourth day of the summer school, participants visited Knehtilä farm in Hyvinkää to explore alternative food production systems. During the visit, they learned about local biogas production and the farm's potential to be productively self-sufficient, where nutrients and energy circulate through the farm's different processes. The visit provided participants with concrete content on how theory can look in practice and gave firsthand understanding of how food production appears from a farmer's perspective.
Summer schools are also an excellent platform for young researchers to build their own international networks and establish connections with other European higher education institutions. In addition to the summer school held in Helsinki, Una Europa is organizing four interdisciplinary summer schools this summer in areas such as artificial intelligence, one health, and material research across Europe.
This summer school was organised by Una Europa's Self Steering Committee in Sustainability, senior researcher Silvia Gaiani (RURALIA), doctoral researcher Urszula Ala-Karvia (RURALIA) and Sini Bäckström (INAR).