University of Helsinki
The Autumn application round for HYMY Travel Grant will open tomorrow 15th August 2019 and close on 28th August 2019. Please see PhD Guide for instruction and link to Aava application system.
Seminar: The Relevance of Social Sciences
What does impact mean in the context of social sciences? What makes social sciences relevant beyond academia – at the moment, and in the future?
Seminar: The Relevance of Social Sciences
Tuesday, 20 August 2019, 1-4 pm, University of Helsinki Language Centre, lecture hall 115 (Fabianinkatu 26)
Welcome to a seminar organized by the University of Helsinki’s Faculty of Social Sciences, with presentations from members of its international Scientific Advisory Board and faculty. Representing a broad field of social sciences and its approaches, the speakers will address the question of relevance in social sciences.
What could be done to make the social sciences more relevant? What kind of international collaboration and benchmarking are beneficial to this goal? How could research and teaching be organized to enhance the relevance of social sciences? Should social sciences organize around problem/phenomena, instead of theories or methods? What is happening to traditional ways of understanding disciplines and disciplinarity in social sciences?
Program
Chair: Vice dean Juhana Aunesluoma
1 – 2.30 pm: Disciplines and paradigms
Social psychology: a discipline in the midst of an(other) identity crisis. Laurent Licata, Université Libre de Bruxelles.
The inequality paradigm and the future of social science. Mike Savage, London School of Economics and Political Science.
The future of the social sciences: a personal view. Stephen Broadberry, University of Oxford.
Discussant Nelli Hankonen, University of Helsinki
Break
2.45 – 4 pm: Interdisciplinarity and institutions
Interdisciplinarity and impact in social science – creating the new American public university at ASU. Karen Mossberger, Arizona State University.
The relevance of social science: experiences across the fault lines of policy and engineering. Elizabeth Shove, Lancaster University.
[Title TBC] Annelise Riles, Northwestern University
Discussant Risto Kunelius, University of Helsinki
All are welcome! Priority will be given to members of the Faculty of Social Sciences. No registration is required.
Application period for the doctoral programmes’ salaried positions open again in September
The University of Helsinki annually allocates funding to doctoral programmes for employing doctoral candidates in salaried positions. The positions are designated for full-time research work, with the aim that the doctoral degree will be completed in four years.
The online call will be open for applications during 3–17 September, 2019
The positions will be awarded for a fixed term of 1–4 years from 1.1.2020. The duration of the employment contract depends on the phase of the doctoral thesis. There are altogether 88 positions available, ten of which are funded by the University of Helsinki Research Foundation.
Start preparing early by checking out the instructions for applying and frequently asked questions. You can find the instructions also on the website of your doctoral programme.
Persistence or Change? Inequalities, Conflicts and Power in Local and Global Perspectives 6th Annual Conference for the Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences & the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change
University of Helsinki 21-22 October 2019 Metsätalo, Unioninkatu 40
Keynotes by
Professor Judith Pallot (Geography, University of Oxford/University of Helsinki):
Professor John Jost (Psychology and Politics, University of New York):
Professor Risto Alapuro (Sociology, University of Helsinki):
Additionally, there will be two panel discussions organized around the themes of inequality as well as post-doctoral career perspectives.
Call for papers
The 6th Annual Conference for PhD students explores the question of inequalities in local and global perspectives.
Inequalities have existed through world history and have shifted over time. Today, both global and local communities are being confronted with a world of growing challenges and crises caused by growing inequalities. In order to solve such crises, it is vital to understand their root causes and analyse possible future outcomes. How does inequalities develop, what are major causes and what are key effects on both a micro and macro level, as well as on local and global societies?
The University of Helsinki for the Doctoral Programme in Social Sciences & Political, Societal and Regional Change invite academic scholars and doctoral researchers to the Doctoral Programmes’ 6th Annual Conference for a discussion of different aspects and challenges related to inequality. Topics to be addressed could include: cultural, economic, environmental, historical, political, social, and gender inequalities.
Possible research topics to be addressed could be, but are not limited in choice such as:
- Theoretical perspectives for understanding how and why inequalities persist
- Overlapping or intersecting inequalities
- The role of political, social and economic factors behind inequality
- Inequalities at local, national and global levels
- Growing inequality or growing equality: exploring the debate
In addition to the theme of inequality, this year the conference also invites doctoral students to discuss their present research work more general in nature, such as their research plans in separate study groups.
Please send your abstracts (max. 300 words) by August 25th, 2019 by filling out the e-form https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/98549/lomake.html
Accepted presenters will be notified by September 9th, 2019.
Please add four to five keywords to your abstract in order to facilitate the allocation of individual papers to different workshops.
The deadline for final papers is October 9th, 2019. The maximum length for papers is 1000 – 8000 words. The doctoral students who will give a presentation of their paper will be awarded with 2 study credits. You may also attend the conference without a paper and obtain 1 study credit.
All doctoral students from the Doctoral Programmes in Social Sciences and Political, Societal and Regional Change are welcome and strongly encouraged to participate.
Please also visit our conference blog! https://blogs.helsinki.fi/psrc-ss-conference-2019/
Árran – Ecology of Indigenous languages
International Conference to celebrate 2019 Year of Indigenous Languages declared by Unesco and the United Nations
When? 19.–20.9.2019
Where? University of Helsinki, Main Building, Fabianinkatu 33
‘Árran’ means hearth/fireplace, and we take it as an analogy to how languages allow people to come together and share their different experiences. On the Year of Indigenous Languages declared by the Unesco and United Nations, the main objective of our conference is to bring together both indigenous and non-indigenous scholars, activists, and artists in order to discuss indigenous languages in light of the current socio-political, economic, and environmental changes, which at present affect the world. Our aim is to exchange knowledge on best practices for the promotion of Indigenous languages, which are often listed as endangered, and to advance knowledge on the relations between Indigenous languages, ontologies, and epistemologies. The conference allows us to match the goals risen by the Unesco by celebrating the Year of Indigenous Languages, and to effectively contribute to scholarship in developing the concept of language ecology further. Metaphorically, sharing stories and narratives, verbal art, ways of speaking, and their symbolism fuels the warmth and guarantees the continuation of the Árran.
Keynote speeches: Gunvor Guttorm (Sámi University of Applied Sciences) and Anthony Webster (University of Texas at Austin).
Opening words: Alexey Tsykarev (EMRIP)
Speakers include:
Mere Kepa (University of Auckland, Aoteorea-New Zealand)
Linita Manu’atu (Api Fakakoloa Educational Services, Auckland, New Zealand & Tonga Institute of Education, Kingdom of Tonga)
Daniel Mundurucu (Mundurucu author, Brazil)
Ekaterina Grudzeva (University of Helsinki)
Harald Gaski (University of Tromsø)
Inga Ravna Eira (Sámi author)
Jelena Porsanger (University of Helsinki)
Katarina Pirak Sikku (Sámi artist)
Maria Khachaturyan (University of Helsinki)
Robert Brave Heart Sr. (Executive Vice President at Red Cloud Indian School, Pine Ridge, South Dakota)
Stef Spronck (University of Helsinki)
Organizers: Laura Siragusa, Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Hanna Guttorm, Irja Seurujärvi-Kari (Indigenous Studies), Rani-Henrik Andersson and Olesya Khanina (Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies)
Program and Conference website: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/conferences/arran-ecology-of-indigenous-languages
Registration before Sept 12th: https://elomake.helsinki.fi/lomakkeet/97903/lomake.html (places limited)
The event on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/811183392592139/
For further information, please contact conference secretary, Indigenous Studies:
Mariia Rauramo: mariia.rauramo@helsinki.fi
Government to provide funding for groundbreaking innovations
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Science Minister calls on researchers and businesses to submit applications for government funding to support groundbreaking innovations.
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Diabetes UK and JDRF have announced their continued commitment to revolutionising Type 1 diabetes treatment, by awarding £490,000 to fund the next generation of immunotherapy research.
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Applying the economics of climate change to antimicrobial resistance could help to avert the 10 million deaths that are predicted to occur by 2050 if urgent action isn’t taken.
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Open Access Government April 2019 showcases a wide array of insightful opinion articles on government policy issues across the globe, including health and social care, research and innovation, environment, agriculture, energy, transport, industry, ICT, blockchain innovation, government, legal affairs and HR & training.
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Oxford University researchers have discovered a brain process common to sleep and ageing in research that could pave the way for new treatments for insomnia.
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Vice-President Ansip and Minister Hirai discussed bilateral EU-Japan cooperation to promote a human-centric approach to artificial intelligence (AI).
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Single-use products should be banned immediately to prevent further damage the environment, business waste and recycling experts have said.
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Dr Gwoshyh Song of Global Aqua Survey Ltd discusses the challenges of implementing offshore wind farms off the coast of Taiwan, and the solutions presented.
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As the arctic ice caps are melting causing the risk of rising sea levels, Professor Martin Sharp of the University of Alberta discusses the speed of change.
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Alberto Mantovani discusses the consequences of climate changes for human health and welfare, including the disruption of agricultural productions.
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In the latest Blockchain Innovation April edition, we discover why Switzerland has become the hub for blockchain businesses, the latest technology trends in hospitality for 2019 and how blockchain is enabling data to be shared.
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Here, Dr Carlos Ziebert, Head of the Calorimeter Center at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) explains precisely how calorimetry can help with battery research.
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Vegard Frihammar, leader of Greenstat, turns the spotlight on hydrogen and reveals how the smallest of elements can solve a big problem by focusing on the maritime industry.
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“Refugee Narratives of Europe – an Area of Security?”
On Friday 17.5.2019, Laura Sumari (University of Helsinki) will give a talk “Refugee Narratives of Europe – an Area of Security?” in the EuroStorie research seminar series. The EuroStorie research seminar is organized by the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives and will host a guest speaker or several shorter presentations centered around a common theme. The seminar is open to all without registration, welcome!
When: 17.5.2019, 13:00-14:00
Where: Meeting room 229, Psychologicum (Siltavuorenpenger 1 A, 00170 Helsinki)
Event page: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/news/society-economy/eurostorie-research-seminar-laura-sumari-17.5.2019
Abstract: Laura’s PhD project examines how refugees and other ‘protection’ or ‘life seekers’ imagine and experience Europe, especially in terms of security and safety in different stages of the displacement. She seeks to find out how Europe is envisioned and experienced from the outside by those trying to enter, and how refugees and asylum seekers socially and culturally construct Europe as an area of security/insecurity throughout the migratory journey and asylum process. The research material is gathered by interviewing refugees and asylum seekers in various places and environments: camps and reception centres as well as urban and rural locations before and after reaching Europe. So far, Laura has collected research material in Kenya as well as Cyprus and Southern Italy and the plan is to continue in other locations next autumn and during spring 2020. Laura will also interview refugees and asylum seekers in Finland. The research is ethnographic by orientation and the analysis critically reflects the concepts of Europe and security. The purpose of the study is to offer a ‘refugee’ perspective to European security discussion. Laura wants to bring alternative narratives as a part of the ‘story of Europe’, traditionally told from the inside by people close to power, and challenge the traditional Eurocentric narratives that dominate the public discussion.
For more information about EuroStorie, the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives, please see www.eurostorie.org.
The Collegium Lecture by Daniel Boyarin (Berkeley) Monday 27.5.2019, 5 pm, reception to follow Venue: Small Hall, University of Helsinki Main Building (Fabianink. 33, 4th floor)
Description:
“In this lecture, I will contend that the binary opposition: The Jews is a religion/The Jews is a nation is based on a false dichotomy. It is further flawed by the assumption that nation is tantamount to nation-state such that only the option ‘religion’ constitutes an oppositional position vis-a-vis a Jewish nation state. I will discuss scholarship that proves definitively that many – if not most – early Zionist political thought did not involve the building of a state. The bulk of the lecture will outline the idea of a Diaspora Nation as the once and (possible) future for the continued existence of the Jews.”
Speaker Bio:
Daniel Boyarin, Taubman Professor of Talmudic Culture and rhetoric, UC Berkeley received his Ph. D. in 1975 from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. He has been an NEH Fellow (twice), a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Jerusalem, a holder of the Berlin Prize at the American Academy in Berlin and a Ford Foundation Fellow. He spent the academic year 2012-2013 as a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and was a Humboldt Research Award recipient at Freie Universität Berlin in 2017. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences since 2006.
Prof. Boyarin has written extensively on talmudic and midrashic studies, and his work has focused on cultural studies in rabbinic Judaism, including issues of gender and sexuality as well as research on the Jews as a colonized people. His most recent research interests center primarily around questions of the relationship of Judaism and Christianity in late antiquity and the genealogy of the concepts of “religion” and “Judaism.” Current projects include a critical edition of the second chapter of Bavli Pesachim, a biography of Josephus for the Yale Jewish Lives, as well as a book to be entitled “What is the Jews”.
His books include Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (1990), Carnal Israel: Reading Sex in Talmudic Culture (1993), A Radical Jew: Paul and the Politics of Identity (1994), and Unheroic Conduct: The Rise of Heterosexuality and the Invention of the Jewish Man (1997), all published by the University of California Press. Further publications include Dying for God: Martyrdom and the Making of Christianity and Judaism (Stanford UP, 1999), Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), Socrates and the Fat Rabbis (University of Chicago Press, 2009), The Jewish Gospel: The Story of the Jewish Christ (the New Press, 2012), A Traveling Homeland: The Talmud as Diaspora (Penn, 2016), Imagine No Religion (with Carlin Barton; Fordham, 2016) and Judaism: the Genealogy of a Modern Notion (Rutgers University Press, 2018).
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The Collegium Lecture is the annual main event of the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies and brings internationally renowned speakers from various fields of research to Helsinki. The audience has the opportunity to converse with Professor Boyarin at a reception held afterwards in the lobby of the Small Hall.
The event is free and open to the public. Welcome!
CALL FOR PAPERS PhD workshop: (In)tangible technology and data in medical humanities and social sciences October 16th 2019
Helsinki Collegium of Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki, Finland
#intangible2019
The workshop is arranged in connection to the symposium with the same name
on October 17th-18th 2019 https://blogs.helsinki.fi/intangibletechnologydata/
Scope: Research on health and illness conducted within medical humanities and social sciences inherently engages both people (such as healthy volunteers, patients, their families, health professionals, geneticists, lab specialists, data managers and policy makers) and their non-human counterparts, in particular, data and technology. Humans, data and technology travel, intermingle and converge. Yet technological applications and analysis of big health data are increasingly defining health and illness, as well as influencing the direction of healthcare policies and services in ways that downplay their fundamental entanglement with mundane, embodied and institutional human activities. Contextualizing and exploring in detail the relations between humans, data and technology allows for a better understanding of healthcare practices.
The workshop offers possibilities for PhD students from a range of fields (anthropology, sociology, science and technology studies, philosophy, law, psychology, gender studies among others) to take part in interdisciplinary discussions on what happens when the human-technology-data assemblage becomes part of daily life. In the workshop, the students will receive feedback on their papers (article manuscripts, work-in-progress) from the keynote speakers and symposium organisers. The students are also invited to the symposium following the PhD workshop.
Keynote speakers:
Prof. Vincanne Adams, Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine, University of California SF
Dr Christine Aicardi, Senior Research Fellow, Human Brain Project Foresight Laboratory, Kings College London
Prof. Barbara Katz Rothman, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, City University of New York
For applying to the workshop, please send an abstract of your paper (max 300 words) by June 15th to: intangible.technology.data@gmail.com . Decisions on acceptance will be made by July 2nd. Please add a bio note of max. 100 words including your name, e-mail and affiliation. Participants of the workshop are required to send a paper (max 2500 words) by September 30th. In addition, participants are encouraged to prepare 1-2 questions for the commentators to address. The papers will be circulated among the workshop participants, so all can comment and discuss.
Information about the workshop and the symposium will be updated on our blog: https://blogs.helsinki.fi/intangibletechnologydata/
For further information, please contact the organisers of the symposium:
Karoliina Snell karoliina.snell@helsinki.fi
Małgorzata Rajtar mrajtar@ifispan.waw.pl or malgorzata.rajtar@helsinki.fi
The National Library’s researcher facilities are available for long-term use on application
The following facilities are available:
- Research carrels in the South Reading Room (10 research carrels)
- Researcher shelves in the North Reading Room (20 shelves)
- Research carrels in the Slavonic Library (2 research carrels)
In this application round, carrels and shelves will be granted for the period 1 Jul – 31 Dec 2019.
The application deadline is 31 May 2019. Successful applicants will be notified by 14 Jun 2019.
The selection criteria include the researcher’s need of the resources of the National Library (especially material restricted to reading room loans), the researcher’s current working conditions and the weekly amount of time the researcher would use the workstation.
More information about the researcher facilities and the application criteria can be found on the website or the application form (see below).