Avsnitt
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This month we are happy to be joined by Markus Kröger and Peter Dewees. Markus is a professor of Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki and one of the co-PIs of the TreesForDev Project. Peter is retired from a 30 plus year career with the World Bank. During his time with the World Bank Peter worked on many different projects, with a focus on why rural people cultivate and plant trees, wood fuel use, and the management of the Miombo woodlands. While his focus was on Eastern Africa, he also has done work in Eastern Europe and Asia. He shares with us his insights into the role of rural peoples’ agency in tree planting and how historical factors have influenced the land use practices. Top-down processes are not always the best path to get trees into the rural landscape; if a farmer needs a tree, they will figure out how to grow it. He shares with us some of the innovations that have been brought to the field that have been successful. We also discuss the question of ecological restoration and whether it is possible through tree planting schemes. We talk about some of the mismatches between the goals of funding agencies and the on-the-ground realities of the people living in place. And while he worked at the Bank for a long time, the views he expressed in this podcast are his own, and should not be ascribed to the World Bank.
Want to learn more about Peter’s work? https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=-HD6w24AAAAJ&hl=en
Want to learn more about Markus’ research? https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/markus-kr%C3%B6ger
Want to revisit the TreesForDev episodes about carbon?
Steffen Böhm https://podcasts.apple.com/ee/podcast/treesfordev-maria-ehrnstr%C3%B6m-fuentes-and-steffen-boehm/id1499621252?i=1000666744435
Forrest Fleischman https://podcasts.apple.com/ee/podcast/treesfordev-maria-ehrnstr%C3%B6m-fuentes-and-forrest/id1499621252?i=1000663758730
Want to learn more about the TreesForDev Project? www.treesfordev.fi
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This month we are honored to be joined by Jojo Mehta from Stop Ecocide International, which is an international advocacy organization with the goal of making ecocide a crime. Jojo gives us insight into the continuous thread throughout her life that led her to this work. Her “outrage” moment was when she learned about fracking. Her work in the anti-fracking community introduced her to the late Polly Higgins, with whom she co-founded Stop Ecocide International. Jojo gives us insight into what kind of gross environmental harms which fall under the umbrella of ecocide. The Independent Expert Panel for the Legal Definition of Ecocide describes it as "unlawful or wanton acts committed with knowledge that there is a substantial likelihood of severe and either widespread or long-term damage to the environment being caused by those acts". This definition focuses on the potential results of the activity in question which creates a kind of reality check. It is not exactly what you do but how you do it, how much you do it, and where you do. It is any instance where the net results of what ones does results in gross damage to the environment. This would force this companies to look at their activities on the ground to assess their activities and whether they are at risk of committing ecocide through their activities. This conversation goes deep and takes us to so many different angles of criminalizing environmental destruction.
Want to learn more about Jojo? https://www.stopecocide.earth/jojo-mehta-profile
Want to learn more about Stop Ecocide International and the work they are undertaking? https://www.stopecocide.earth/
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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This month we are delighted to be joined by Mario Blaser. Mario is a cultural anthropologist and an Associate Professor of Geography and Archaeology at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. Mario has engaged in ethnographic work with communities in many different parts of the world, including in Paraguay and Canada. His fascination with how people lived in other places is rooted in his early experiences living in a small town in Southern Argentina and interacting with visitors passing through. Mario gives us insight into what ethnography is in practice and how it extends beyond just conducting interviews in place. Mario introduces us to the idea of “deep hanging out” and shares how this approach helps the researcher to create a more nuanced and subtle understanding of relations in place. Mario uses this base to unpack for us his insights into the pluriversal world and ways of worlding or how the world is made through practices. In short, the world is not something that is already there, but it produced and reproduced through human and non-human relations in place. This just scratches the surface of this rich conversation. His latest book is For Emplacement: Political Ontology in Two Acts , and its Spanish language twin (is not exactly the same but shares the same “genetic make up”) Incomún: Un ensayo de ontología política para el fin del mundo (único), which is available for free download.
Want to learn more about the duck-rabbit illusion? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit%E2%80%93duck_illusion
Want to learn more about Mario’s work? https://www.mun.ca/archaeology/people/faculty/mario-blaser/
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In this episode we are joined by Marketta Vuola and Matthieu Pierre. Marketta is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package on Madagascar. Matthieu Pierre is starting his PhD at the University of Antananarivo in Madagascar, focusing on protected areas and restoration in Madagascar. In this conversation we talk about the general context of Madagascar, including its high biodiversity, and the role that conservation and ecological restoration play in Madagascar. Marketta and Mattieu have been in collaboration for several years, even predating the start of the TreesForDev project.
We talk about the two areas where fieldwork is being undertaken in the TreesForDev project, Mahajanga and Andapa. Mahajanga is on the West Coast while Andapa is in the northern part of the country. At the time of recording, Matthieu had just returned from doing fieldwork and gives us some of his impressions from these on the ground experiences.
Want to learn more about the TreesForDev project? www.treesfordev.fi
Want to learn more about Marketta’s research? https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/fi/persons/marketta-paula-sofia-vuola
Want to learn more about our Matthieu’s research? https://www.helsinki.fi/en/researchgroups/trees-for-development/people-partners/partners
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This month we are delighted to be joined by Andrea Brock, who is a political ecologist at University of Sussex. Andrea works with forest defenders and environmental movements looking at the responses from state and corporate actors to ecological dissent. Andrea shares with us the trajectory of her research career which was influenced by being brought up in the German Rhineland in proximity to the world’s largest open-cast lignite mine. She shares with us her insights into the actions of the mining company and the greenwashing acrobatics that are put in place to distract from the ecological destruction that is taking place as a result of these mining projects. She gives insight into the repression that had been levied against land defenders in the ancient Hambach Forest which has been under threat from mine operator RWE. In addition, the relationships between different types policing and ecocide are explored and how this influences the domination of non-human and human species.
Her research is based in the European context and examines how the logics of repression play out and ecological defenders are criminalized in Europe.
Want to learn more about Andrea Brock’s work? https://profiles.sussex.ac.uk/p322495-andrea-brock
Resources mentioned during the episode:
Brock, A., & Dunlap, A. (2018). Normalising corporate counterinsurgency: Engineering consent, managing resistance and greening destruction around the Hambach coal mine and beyond. Political geography, 62, 33-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.09.018.
Dunlap, A., & Brock, A. (Eds.). (2022). Enforcing ecocide: Power, policing & planetary militarization. Springer Nature. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99646-8
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In this episode we are joined by Professor Steffen Böhm from University of Exeter School of Business and project PI and Associate Professor Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes from Hanken School of Economics. In this conversation we explore carbon markets and how they work (or do not work) and what their connection is to so-called green development. We talk about compliance markets and voluntary markets. In the voluntary carbon markets, anyone can develop a project that plants trees in exchange for carbon credits. There are mechanisms and logics that are not well understood by the general populace that allow highly polluting companies to make themselves look carbon neutral or green through their participation in carbon offsetting. This myopic focus on carbon has developed into a more or less fetishist relationship with carbon and overly simplified measurements that obfuscate the wider social environmental impacts of companies.
Interested to learn more about Steffen’s work? https://business-school.exeter.ac.uk/people/profile/index.php?web_id=Steffen_Boehm
Interested to learn more about the TreesForDev Project? www.treesfordev.fi
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Böhm, S., Misoczky, M. C., & Moog, S. (2012). Greening capitalism? A Marxist critique of carbon markets. Organization Studies, 33(11), 1617-1638. https://doi.org/10.1177/0170840612463326
Ehrnström-Fuentes, M., & Kröger, M. (2018). Birthing extractivism: The role of the state in forestry politics and development in Uruguay. Journal of Rural Studies, 57, 197-208. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2017.12.022
Ramirez, J., & Böhm, S. (2021). Transactional colonialism in wind energy investments: Energy injustices against vulnerable people in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. Energy Research & Social Science, 78, 102135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2021.102135
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In this episode we are joined by Forrest Fleischman from the University of Minnesota and the project principal investigator, Maria Ehrnstöm-Fuentes from Hanken School of Economics.
Forrest gives us insight into the work he has done in the Indian context in relation to tree planting and the long-term outcomes of tree planting schemes. India has had a long history of tree planting programs, but are they always successful? In the western Himalaya, where Forrest is working about half the planting takes place in areas where trees are already growing and about half takes place in areas where trees are not currently growing and most probably will not successfully grow due to environmental or land use reasons. There is sometimes a disconnect between what the government programs want to accomplish (or what looks good on paper) and the experience on the ground of the best land use—both geographically and for the community living in place. One key in indicator of success is the inclusion of the community and getting their buy-in and participation in the tree planting program. However, more research is needed to figure out how to generate that local participation and where it roots from.
Forrest gives us insight into the mythology of the modern concept that trees everywhere are a good thing. As more people are divorced from earning their living from the land this concept become more and more common. However, this lionization of the forest landscapes devalues the natural and vital landscapes that naturally do not have trees or have only scattered trees. These landscapes are currently being destroyed in support of tree planting to match this prominent environmental narrative.
Resources mentioned in the episode:
Veldman, J.W. et al., Tyranny of trees in grassy biomes. Science 347,484-485(2015). DOI:10.1126/science.347.6221.484-c
Bai, Y., & Cotrufo, M. F. (2022). Grassland soil carbon sequestration: Current understanding, challenges, and solutions. Science, 377(6606), 603-608.
Forget Tree Planting, Start Tree Growing a Q & A with Lalisa Duguma https://forestsnews.cifor.org/61174/forget-tree-planting-start-tree-growing?fnl=en
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This month we are delighted to welcome Maija Lassila back to the EXALT podcast for our second conversation. Maija is post-doctoral researcher at Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Science (HELSUS) and recently received her doctorate from Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki. Maija takes to the North and gives us an overview of the work she did during her doctorate. We talk about reindeer herding and the impacts of resource extractivism (and the threat of future resource extractivism) on reindeer herding in Sápmi and Finnish Lapland. Maija “examines the contestations arising from the early stages of mining expansion in Utsjoki and Sodankylä.” Maija looks at the contestations the local community has to mining projects and traces out how this plays out in practice. Join us for this thought-provoking and wide-ranging conversation that gives deep insight into this world. Maija also reminds us how important it is to engage with post-extractivist alternatives as a way to reduce our dependence on the consumption.
If you would like to learn more about Maija’s academic work https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/maija-lassila
If you would like to read Maija’s doctoral thesis, Incommensurabilities of New Arctic Extractive Projects: Resistance to mining among Sámi, reindeer herders and local communities in Sápmi and Finnish Lapland, http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-51-9652-1 (links to the articles can be found in the dissertation)
If you are interested to listen to Maija’s first appearance on the podcast, Extractivism Research and Breaking Away from the Written Word, https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/maija-lassila-extractivism-research-and-breaking-away/id1499621252?i=1000472526548
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In this month’s episode we are delighted to be joined by Brazilian agroecologist, Karen Nobre Krull, who has worked on projects in federal environmental and research institutions in Brazil, such as EMBRAPA and ICMBio, and in the last year with the NGO Imaflora. Her work focuses on developing strategies and implementing actions with rural communities for the agroecological transition of productive systems, regenerative agriculture, and rural development, incorporating environmental, social, and economic aspects. Over the past four years, her work has been concentrated in the Brazilian Amazon, particularly in the state of Pará.
In this conversation Karen gives us insight into how she first became interested in the topic of family farming and how it supports the spread of agroecological practices. Agroecological farming in Brazil stands as an alternative to the industrial agricultural practices associated with the dominant food system. Creating space for these small farmers is increasingly important in the face of the agroextractivist spread of monoculture agriculture like soybeans and corn.
If you are interested in these topics, Karen recommends the book, Ideas to Postpone the End of the World by Ailton Krenak
Interested to hear more about Karen’s research? https://www.linkedin.com/in/karen-nobre-krull-24420118b/
Check out the presentation Karen gave in connection with the EXALT Initiative and the TreesForDev Project https://youtu.be/gKzH0xWFcCM?si=XyWzO4YVAn9db-ng
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In this episode we are joined by Linda Annala Tesfaye and Bikila Warkineh. Linda is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package that is looking at Ethiopia. Bikila is the Head of Plant Biology and Biodiversity Management at Addis Ababa University and works as Associate Professor of Ecology. His research centers on the broad area of the ecological sciences and ecosystems ecology. He is strongly interested in the science, politics, and policies of natural resource management, climate change, sustainable development, and how these are linked with socio-economic development.
Bikila and Linda give us insight into the history and current developments in tree planting in Ethiopia. Ethiopia has a long history with tree planting and more generally greening initiatives. Through the Green Legacy Initiative, Ethiopia has become a forerunner in ecological restoration in the African context. The activities in Ethiopia go beyond just tree planting, but really working toward developing a resilient and green culture in the face of climate change. One key facet of the work being done in Ethiopia is the widespread use of native species in the planting projects. This model has had many positive regional impacts and has strongly influenced the approach to tree planting in its neighboring countries.
Want to learn more about the TreesForDev project? www.treesfordev.fi
Want to learn more about Linda’s research? https://www.hanken.fi/en/person/linda-annala-tesfaye
Want to learn more about Bikila’s research? https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=stfEp1EAAAAJ&hl=en
Want to learn more about our collaborator, Addis Ababa University? https://www.aau.edu.et/
Interested to learn more about the Green Legacy Initiative? https://greenlegacy.et/green-legacy/home
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We are joined by Marketta Vuola from University of Helsinki’s Global Development Studies. In this conversation Marketta gives us insight into the work that she is doing in her doctoral research. She started her academic career interested in conservation and national parks, but during her field work she kept running into gold mining and its role in the rural areas of Madagascar. Marketta gives insight into what artisanal means on the ground in Madagascar, which is not a simple thing to define as there is wide range of practices that fall under this designation. The scale she investigates is quite small scale and overturns the masculine stereotype of mining because it is often an activity that involves whole families. There are approximately 700000 artisanal miners, and it is the second most popular source of income after subsistence agriculture. Marketta opens some of the dynamics that surround the complicated relationship between mining, conservation, and violence in Madagascar.
Interested in the book Marketta mentioned? Made in Madagascar: Sapphires, Ecotourism, and the Global Bazaar by Andrew Walsh https://utorontopress.com/9781442603745/made-in-madagascar/
Want to learn more about Marketta’s academic work? https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/marketta-paula-sofia-vuola
Interested to listen to the EXALT episode with Aili Pyhälä that was mentioned during the episode? https://podcasts.apple.com/fi/podcast/aili-pyh%C3%A4l%C3%A4-activism-alternatives-and-academia/id1499621252?i=1000466051482
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In this episode we are joined by Ossi Ollinaho and Natacha Bruna. Ossi is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package that is looking at Mozambique. Natacha is scholar activist and researcher who is doing a post-doctoral project at Cornell University in the Global Development Department, previously she worked at our project partner at Observatório do Meio Rural (OMR), in Mozambique. Natacha coordinated the research line on models of rural development and her research has focused on the impacts of large-scale investment.
Natacha gives us an insight on her take into Green Extractivism and how this plays out in the Mozambican context. She sees green extractivism as a variation of extractivism where what is being extracted is emission rights. Emission rights are extracted from the rural poor and then sold to entities like multinational firms who then have the right to continue to pollute. The privilege of pollution is given to the main actors who are perpetrating the pollution. We explore this dynamic from multiple perspectives.
Want to learn more about the TreesForDev project? www.treesfordev.fi
Want to learn more about Ossi’s research? https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/ossi-ollinaho
Want to learn more about Natacha’s research? https://cals.cornell.edu/natacha-bruna
Want to learn more about our collaborator in Mozambique, Observatório do Meio Rural (OMR)? www.omrmz.org
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In this episode we are joined by Marketta Vuola and Zo Randriamaro. Marketta is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package on Madagascar. Zo works for the Research and Support Center for Development Alternatives-Indian Ocean (RSCDA-IO) / Centre de Recherches et d’Appui pour les Alternatives de Développement-Océan Indien (CRAAD-OI). The RSCDA-IO / CRAAD-OI, which is a pan-African, non-profit organization. “Its mission is to promote sustainable development alternatives that are centered on the realization of human rights and based on the principles of gender equality, social, economic and ecological justice.”
Marketta and Zo give us insight into the overarching context in Madagascar and share why it is one of the case study countries in the TreesForDev project. We discuss some of the disconnects between ecological restoration and conservation and also some of the ways that organizations tasked to help, do not always improve livelihood prospects on the ground.
Want to learn more about the TreesForDev project? www.treesfordev.fi
Want to learn more about our collaborator in Madagascar, Centre de Recherches et d’Appui pour les Alternatives de Développement-Océan Indien (CRAAD-OI)? (In French) https://ccfd-terresolidaire.org/partenaire/centre-de-recherches-et-dappui-pour-les-alternatives-de-developpement-ocean-indien-craad-oi/
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This month we are really excited to have a conversation with Rubén Vezzoni, who is one of our University of Helsinki colleagues from the Doctoral Programme in Political, Societal and Regional Change. His work looks at different aspects of the political economy of the EU’s green transition, with case studies on solar panels, hydrogen, and post-growth agri-food systems. In our conversation we focused in on “green” hydrogen and whether in practice it can live up to the grand narratives that are told about it, or whether it is just a story that obscure what is really going on. Rubén gives us some insights into the Finnish context and how the externalities from the consumption here are exported to other places, for example in the global South. The amount of stuff that we consume continues to increase, even under the auspices of green transition. To be able to exist these new technologies require more materials, more input, and more extraction. We look at the lock-ins and path dependencies and especially the drivers of relentless capital expansion and accumulation.
Resources mentioned during the episode:
The Social Limits to Growth by Fred Hirsch https://www.routledge.com/Social-Limits-to-Growth/Hirsch/p/book/9780415119580
Interested to read more of Rubén’s work?
“The Finnish Bioeconomy Beyond Growth” (this is the report that is discussed during the episode) http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-380-817-1
“How “clean” is the hydrogen economy? Tracing the connections between hydrogen and fossil fuels” https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eist.2024.100817
“Joining the ideational and the material: transforming food systems toward radical food democracy” https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fsufs.2024.1307759/full
Check out his University profile here https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/ruben-vezzoni
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This month on the EXALT podcast we are super excited to be joined by Xander Dunlap for a precedent-breaking third conversation. Xander is a research fellow at the Institute for Global Sustainability at Boston University and a visiting research fellow at Global Develop Studies at University of Helsinki. Xander talks to us about his new book from Pluto Press, “This System is Killing Us: Land Grabbing, the Green Economy and Ecological Conflict.” This book looks at the last 10 years of work Xander has done in the thick of environmental conflict. Xander unpacks the themes of the book for us and gives us insight into the concept of permanent ecological conflict. Token forms of activism and feel-good activities, which are not unfamiliar to academic circles, are not enough to think past the existing frameworks and modalities that people are living under. This book is an intervention against the mainstreaming or normalization of ecological crises. This conversation covers so many different aspects of the book and Xander’s work. Join us for this impactful insight into why and how “This System is Killing Us.”
Check out Xander’s new book https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745348827/this-system-is-killing-us/
Check out Xander’s profiles at Boston University https://www.bu.edu/igs/profile/alexander-dunlap/ and University of Helsinki https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/alexander-dunlap
Find Xander on X (formerly Twitter) @DrX_ADunlap
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In this episode we are joined by Ossi Ollinaho and Máriam Abbas. Ossi is a project researcher from the TreesForDev project leading the work package that is looking at Mozambique. Máriam is a researcher from Observatório do Meio Rural (OMR), in Mozambique, who is coordinating the research line “Environment and Rural Areas”, which explores, among other topics, the impacts of climate change on agriculture, the causes of deforestation and mainstreaming biodiversity in the agricultural sector.
Ossi and Máriam give us insight into why Mozambique is one of the case study countries in the TreesForDev project. Agriculture accounts for approximately 25 percent of the GDP of the country. Thus, there is a large rural population, and the forest has a very important role in the rural populations’ livelihood prospects. They reflect on the economic system and the underlying extractivist logics that are often incompatible with improving local conditions.
Want to learn more about the TreesForDev project? www.treesfordev.fi
Want to learn more about our collaborator in Mozambique, Observatório do Meio Rural (OMR)? www.omrmz.org
Want to learn more about Siemenpuu Foundation’s work in Mozambique? https://siemenpuu.org/en/countries/mozambique/
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Welcome to the debut episode of the limited series TreesForDev project podcast. In this episode we are honored to be joined by the project principal investigators, Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes and Markus Kröger, from Hanken School of Economics and University of Helsinki respectively. In this conversation, they introduce us to who they are and what types of questions are being investigated in the TreesForDev project. This project examines the dynamics of ecological restoration involving tree planting schemes. Planting trees is a popular and “easy” way to try to restore ecosystems and mitigate climate change. Our project examines the socio-ecological/economic impacts of tree planting in the global South. The project is funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affairs through the Develop2 funding instrument, which is managed in conjunction with the Research Council of Finland. The TreesForDev will run until the end of 2026 and includes research in Finland, Madagascar, Ethiopia, Mozambique, and Brazil. Want to learn more about the TreesForDev Project? Visit our website at www.treesfordev.fiWant to learn more about Maria’s work? Please visit her research profile https://www.hanken.fi/en/person/maria-ehrnstrom-fuentesWant to learn more about Markus’ work? Please visit his research profile https://www.helsinki.fi/en/about-us/people/people-finder/markus-kroger-9091436
This limited series podcast is made possible through funding from the Helsinki Institute of Sustainability Sustainability Science (HELSUS) at the University of Helsinki. If you would like to learn more about HELSUS, please check out their webpage: https://www.helsinki.fi/en/helsinki-institute-sustainability-science
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This month we are overjoyed to be joined by fellow University of Helsinki Global Development Studies doctoral researcher, Martta Kaskien. Martta is currently working with the project Citizenship Utopias in the Global South: The Pursuit of Transformative Alternatives in Times of Civic Disillusionment. Her research is centred on feminist activist narratives in Kenya using ethnographic methods. She gives us insight into her research trajectory and how she got to this topic in this context, and how the COVID-19 pandemic impacted her fieldwork. She gives us insight into how the social pressure from anti-feminist political and public spaces, especially on social media, impact feminist activism and activists. However, even in the face of this pressure she has noticed the prevalence of curated spaces on social media that are created by the feminist activists themselves. These spaces are focused on community building and represent safe spaces for radical feminists to express themselves in the way they wish. These spaces are a form of an everyday utopia and allows these feminists to live life as they would like to today and how they would like to live in the real world in the future.
If you would like to know more about Martta’s research work, please check out her University profile https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/martta-kaskinen
If you would like to read more about the Citizenship Utopias Project https://blogs.helsinki.fi/citizenshiputopias/
Want to check out Eija Ranta’s episode that we refer to? Here is a direct links for your convenience.
Apple podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/zw/podcast/eija-ranta-when-indigenous-movements-lead-governments/id1499621252?i=1000622609915
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1XUlXgKRWFSUj4jxh6yz3a?si=LbXpbC20SKOccxJoPOLGGw
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This month we have a deeply interesting conversation with social anthropologist, Dr. Avi KBH, who is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the project Animal Crosslocations, which is resourced through the Resilient and Just Systems (RESET) Network at University of Helsinki. We talked about his new project, “Mosquito Crosslocations and Participatory Evaluations of Mosquito Interventions,” and the trajectory that led him to be interested in these topics. In this conversation we think through the complex web of relationships inherent to multispecies interactions. In particular, he highlighted some of the compelling reasons why we need to shift some of our narratives related to the myriad beings we humans characterize as “pests”. Pests is in quotes because using this language casually brings its own sometimes (often) misguided perceptions and assumptions about the role the being in question plays within the wider web of life.
If you would like to engage with Avi and learn more about the Animal Cross locations project, please visit his blog - https://blogs.helsinki.fi/avibetzh/
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This month we were absolutely delighted to be joined by Joonatan Ala-Könni, for a super interesting conversation that connects natural sciences and extractivisms. Joonatan Ala-Könni is a doctoral researcher in Atmospheric Science at the Institute for Atmospheric and Earth System Research (INAR) at the University of Helsinki. Joonatan’s work is all about climate change and using insights gained from the processes of carbon binding in aquatic environments. The work looks at the physical world – in very basic terms the transport of matter and heat in environments that are water based. His field is called micro-meteorology, which is looking at ecosystems that are no larger than a few hundred meters at the very largest. In the sub-arctic lakes and rivers form a large percentage of the total surface area of the space, thus they become a quite important player in carbon binding. There is surprisingly little data on the role lakes have in binding this carbon. Join us for this conversation to learn more about a natural science view on climate change.
If you are interested to know more about Joonatan and his work, please check out his university profile https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/joonatan-ala-k%C3%B6nni
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