Jarno Valkonen (jarno.valkonen@ulapland.fi)

I am Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at University of Lapland, Finland. I also have Adjunct professorship (docent) of Environmental sociology at University of Eastern Finland and Adjunct professorship (docent) of Nature and natural resource politics at University of Tampere, Finland. I received my PhD from the Department of Sociology at the University of Tampere in 2003. Since the autumn 2003 I have worked in several positions at University of Lapland and I became Professor of Sociology in 2015. In 2011– 2013 I was the editor-in-chief of Sosiologia – The Journal of the Finnish Sociological Association, Westermarck Society. My scientific background is in the field of environmental social sciences. My research interests are wide ranging and include politics of nature, nature-based economies, tourism work, human-nature relationship, indigenous knowledge, ethnopolitics, and environmental conflicts. I have published extensively in those issues both in Finnish and in English. My latest book is ‘Knowing from the Indigenous North. Sámi Approaches to History, Politics and Belonging’ (2019, Routledge) edited together with Thomas Hylland Eriksen and Sanna Valkonen. Currently, I am leading the Waste Society -project where I am studying ontological politics of waste in Finnish Lapland. I am also interested how infrastructures (energy, water, waste) interact with social structures to shape human conceptions of nature, human-nature relationships, and human action.

Veera Kinnunen (veera.kinnunen@ulapland.fi)

I am a Senior Lecturer of Sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Lapland. I received my first bachelor’s degree (Bachelor of Design) from the Academy of Design, Kuopio, where I studied Contemporary textile techniques. I then went on to study sociology and cultural history at the University of Lapland. Throughout my work, I have been dealing with the questions of home and homelessness, dwelling and everyday life from different angles. Theoretically, I work in the threshold of more-than-human sociology, environmental humanities, and feminist ethics. In my doctoral dissertation I studied dwelling with mundane things – and the practices of divesting, keeping and settling in – ethnographically by focussing in the process of moving house. In my lectio praecursoria I suggested provocatively that the current environmental crisis urges us to become more materialist. That is, to acknowledge stuff – not only in respect to what they mean or do to us – in all its materiality. The research on unwanted stuff and the practical and theoretical question of (new) materialism lead me to become keenly interested in the even more obscure aspect of everyday life: trash, waste, rubbish… Currently, I am conducting ethnographical fieldwork on emerging alternative waste practices. I am especially interested in the new composting method called Bokashi, which is based on anaerobic fermenting with a specific mixture of certain microbes. This research project has evolved into a multi-species ethnography of sharing our lives with microbes.

 Heikki Huilaja (heikki.huilaja@ulapland.fi)

I am a researcher in sociology in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Lapland. Since 2003 I have worked in several teaching and research positions at the University of Lapland. My main research interest is on the sociology of work. In my doctoral dissertation I study recruitment as a context in which the qualifications and suitability for the work is situationally negotiated. I have published on issues as work and working life, skills and qualifications, recruitment process and the negotiated context of recruitment, and skills at the service work. Currently I am working as a researcher in The Waste Society project. In the waste studies, my interest is on the waste as work and business, and on the societal organization of waste in Finnish Lapland. The organization of waste management is a complex and even contradictory combination of institutional waste management and private or public-private waste businesses and services.

Teemu Loikkanen (teemu.loikkanen@ulapland.fi)

I am a PhD student of sociology and a junior researcher of The Waste Society project at the University of Lapland, Faculty of Social Sciences. In my master’s thesis, I studied the construction of waste citizenship in waste governance. I have developed the concept of waste citizenship from the social scientific theories and discussions about environmental citizenship. Previously I have worked as a research assistant at the Faculty of Social Sciences in the University of Lapland, as well as at the Finnish National Resources Institute in Oulu, in an EU-funded project designed to diminish the amount of food waste in the region. In my current, post-graduate research I examine the molding of waste management infrastructure, required by the EUs Circular Economy scheme.

Birgitta Vinkka (birgitta.vinkka@ulapland.fi)

I am a master of social sciences, majoring in political science. In my master’s thesis I looked into two environmental conflicts located in the Sápmi, and studied the ever evolving political tradition of Sámi activism. Currently I am working in the Waste Society project as a research assistant. My tasks consist of organizing a web conference for the project, and creating a research plan for my post-graduate thesis. In my future thesis I aim to situate the discussions of the political ecology and urbanized nature to an arctic context. My interests lie in the urbanized snowscapes and the governance of urban snow in the actualizing climate crisis.

COLLABORATORS:

Professor Tim Ingold (tim.ingold@abdn.ac.uk) United Kingdom,
University of Aberdeen. Tim Ingold was born in 1948. He received his BA in Social Anthropology from the University of Cambridge in 1970, and his PhD in 1976. In 1999, Tim Ingold moved to take up the newly established Chair of Social Anthropology at the University of Aberdeen, where he has been instrumental in setting up the UK’s youngest Department of Anthropology, established in 2002. In his latest research he has been exploring three themes, all arising from his earlier work on the perception of the environment, concerning first, the dynamics of pedestrian movement, secondly, the creativity of practice, and thirdly, the linearity of writing.

Professor Sarah Pink (sarah.pink@monash.edu) Australia,
RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia.

Sarah Pink is design anthropologist, researcher, consultant and thought leader, whose work focuses on scholarship and intervention in the fields of technology design, digital technologies in everyday life and design for wellbeing. She is currently Professor of Design and Emerging Technologies at Monash University, where she is also Director of the interdisciplinary Emerging Technology Research Lab, spanning Monash Art, Design and Architecture (MADA) and Faculty of Information Technology.

Professor Steven Woolgar (Steve.Woolgar@sbs.ox.ac.uk) United Kingdom, Said Business School, University of Oxford

Alongside his role at Saïd Business School, Steve is a Professor at Linköpings University. His areas of expertise within the field of Science and Technology Studies (STS) include governance and accountability relations, mundane objects and ordinary technologies, provocation and intervention, visualisation and evidence, social theory and the use of neuroscience in business and management.

Professor Hervé Corvellec (herve.corvellec@ism.lu.se) Sweden,
University of Lund

Born in France, Hervé Corvellec has been living in Sweden since 1985. He is a professor of Business Administration at the Department of Service Management and Service Studies, Campus Helsingborg, Lund University. Corvellec’s fields of research and teaching are organization theory, and he has been working for a long time with infrastructure issues, for example public libraries, railroad planning, wind power siting, risk in public transportation. For the last ten years or so he has focused on the production and management of waste.

Professor Olli Pyyhtinen (olli.pyyhtinen@uta.fi) Finland
University of Tampere

In my research, I’ve focused much on classical sociology but also been interested in the future of sociology by trying to figure out ways to renew the sociological imagination. Broadly put, my research interests lie within social theory, philosophy, sociology of art, science and technology studies and economic sociology, and address issues such as the notion and constitution of the social, philosophical sociology, togetherness, materiality, the gift and waste. I’m currenlty embarking on a project on the moral economy of waste (partly together with prof. Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen), exploring the connections between value, ethics, and waste matter which deals with waste. In the project, we look at how waste and waste management participate in constituting society.

Professor Turo-Kimmo Lehtonen (turo-kimmo.lehtonen@uta.fi) Finland, University of Tampere  

Lehtonen’s orientation to social sciences is that of conceptually informed empiricism. This implies posing basic questions of social philosophy in research sites provided by empirical case studies; another name for this approach is doing ‘fieldwork in philosophy’. His main interest areas have been the sociology of insurance, risk and uncertainty; science and technology studies; economic sociology; the sociology of consumption and social theory. Lehtonen’s present work centres on three topic areas. First, he works on the management of uncertainty and on the uses of financial technologies. Especially, he has examined how life, health and death are commodified in the contemporary practices of insurance, and how the dynamic relationship between social security and markets shapes the conditions of existence for people. Second, Lehtonen is involved in a project that examines how waste and waste management condition the present day western societies’ way of life. Lehtonen’s case study, developed jointly with Professor Olli Pyyhtinen (Tampere University), analyses freeganism and dumpster diving, that is, practices of acquiring food stuffs from trash bins. As an alternative way of life, freeganism brings very clearly to the fore contemporary ideals and practices related to consumption, food, cleanliness, gift giving, proprietary rights and waste management.

Associate Professor María José Zapata Campos
(mj.zapata@gri.gu.se) Sweden, University of Lund

Specialist in the field of social scientific waste studies and waste
management. Her research is especially important in combining comparative knowledge of waste management in the Nordic countries. Zapata Campos’s areas of research include public-private collaboration and organising environmental sustainability, especially in cities.

Associate Professor Patrik Zapata (patrik.zapata@spa.gu.se) Sweden
University of Lund

Research interests: City organising,informal settlements, sustainability, waste management, local governments, scandology, organization theory, management, sociological institutional theory, labour market integration. Patrik’s research is published in journals as Accounting, Organizations and Society; Environment and Urbanization; Habitat International; Journal of Change Management; Journal of Cleaner Production and Public Administration and Development.

Associate Professor Richard Ek (richard.ek@ism.lu.se) Sweden
University of Lund

I am an associate professor in human geography and currently editor for Geografiska Annaler B: Human Geography. With a Bachelor in political science and a Ph.D. in human geography I consider myself being a political geographer interested in how power over territories are articulated, implemented and consolidated. In my Ph.D. from 2003 (in Swedish) I studied how the spatial visions regarding the future of the transnational Öresund region was used as a discursive tool to “steer” the societal development in a certain (neoliberal) direction as the same time as the same spatial visions excluded alternative geographies. On the Department of Service Management, my research interests has broadened, through an additional interest in the spatiality of the service economy.

Professor Maria Åkerman (maria.akerman@vtt.fi) Finland
VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd

Dr.Sc. Maria Åkerman acts as a Principal Scientist at VTT Technical Research Centre where her focus area is dynamics of socio-technical change. She has multidisciplinary background in social sciences, namely environmental policy, science and technology studies and economics and her key research interests include politics of environmental knowledge production, socio-technical transformations, sustainability of natural resources governance and material politics. Working at the interface and across various disciplines, she has also been interested in methodologies of interdisciplinary research and collaborative knowledge production. In addition to VTT, Maria Åkerman is currently also affiliated to the University of Eastern Finland as Principal Investigator of a research project dealing with nutrient recycling and shifting economies of fertilisation.

Senior Researcher Helena Valve (helena.valve@ymparisto.fi) Finland
Finnish Environment Institute

In my research I ask how environmental policy goals translate to governance in practice. Through what kinds of relations and networks does policy gain its significance? Moreover, what perhaps unintended may ensue: how do the emerging networks and arrangements precondition environmental change. Recently I and my colleagues have studied the operationalisation of water policy and governance. Most of our on-going projects focus on the promotion of circular and bioeconomy transitions. The QUMARE project funded by the Academy of Finland generates knowledge about the politics and potentials of nutrient recycling.

Professor Gay Hawkins (g.hawkins@westernsydney.edu.au) Australia
Western Sydney University

Professor Gay Hawkins has played a key role in the development of Australian cultural studies as an interdisciplinary and philosophically informed practice of social reflection. Professor Hawkins’ work on environments, natures and cultures has been internationally recognised. In 2005 she published The ethics of waste, a book that examined the materiality of waste and the ways in which it makes ethical claims on us. This book has had a major influence on the development of ‘Discard Studies’ a vibrant and growing international research field.

Accociate Professor Maria puig de la Bellacasa (m.puig@le.ac.uk) United Kingdom, University of Warwick

Maria Puig de la Bellacasa currently works at CIM, University of Warwick. Her work is interdisciplinary, working with science and technology studies, cultural geographies, feminist theory, the environmental humanities and political ecology. She is interested in how questions of ethics, politics and justice affect and are affected by scientific practices, as well as on the socio-cultural imaginaries enacted by technoscientific intervention. Currently she focuses on scientific approaches to the soil. She’s also interested in alternative spaces of knowing and doing – everyday forms of ecological care, permaculture movements and materialist spiritualities.