Imagining change through science at Demos Helsinki Research Encounters

As Demos Helsinki turned 20 years, we celebrated two decades of impactful work at the intersection of research and societal transformation in November 2025. In Imagining Change Through Science – Demos Helsinki Research Encounters, we explored how science and research have shaped societal change and helped imagine new social contracts, relationships, and urban realities to achieve a fair, sustainable, and joyful next era. The Research Encounters provided us a unique chance to reflect on the past and envision the future with our partners, collaborators, and friends from across the globe. 

Transforming social contracts – Imagining just and sustainable futures

The seminar’s first session looked back on how European and Finnish social contracts have evolved over the past 20 years and ahead to the kinds of contracts that may emerge in the next two decades. The concept of the social contract, as defined by session chair Anna Björk (Demos Helsinki), refers to an agreement—both conceptual and concrete—between the members of a polity on the principles of this polity.

Emilia Palonen (University of Helsinki) opened the session by examining howthe Finnish social contract has been reconstructed over the past 20 years, discussing how populism, polarisation, climate concern, and shifting understandings of neutrality and welfare have reshaped the imagined “we” in Finnish society. She identified hegemonic transformations, including a shift from euro-enthusiasm to euroscepticism, the mainstreaming of the far-right agenda, the sidelining of climate concerns, and a move from equal opportunity to individualism underpinned by the pessimistic view of “we cannot afford it” for the welfare state. 

For instance, in Finland, the welfare state is challenged by unequal treatment and threats to democracy via debates on regional autonomy. Critically, the military social contract has dramatically shifted from the myth of the Winter War and neutrality to NATO membership and prioritising military investment. 

Sir Geoff Mulgan (UCL) continued by highlighting the fragility of contemporary social contracts, including the implicit social contract of science. He noted that while investment in technologies such as AI is rising rapidly, public R&D funding is declining, creating a growing imbalance. This prompted reflections on welfare social contracts that require reimagination and prioritising with challenges such as isolation, loneliness, and relational power coming to the fore. Mulgan also emphasised that the social sciences must move beyond analysis and take an active role in designing new, more responsive societal arrangements.

Looking toward the next 20 years, Tuuli Hirvilammi (University of Tampere) invited participants to imaginean eco-social contract grounded in planetary boundaries and post-growth realities. Key elements for a new eco-social contract include: acknowledging humans as part of ecosystems; uniting against climate change; states safeguarding a safe and just space for humanity; an individual duty to take less and give back to nature; and the purpose of the economy shifting to providing decent income and livelihood for all instead of concentrating wealth. It also involves collective organisation around new caring communities when welfare capacity is limited.

Along the same lines, Kari Jalonen (Demos Helsinki) shed light on multispecies justice by sharing insights from the MUST – Enabling multispecies transitions project. We should dismantle established structures so that more-than-human voices are actively heard, focusing on: representation (recognising affected ecosystems), distribution (recognising harms and benefits), and agency (recognising the behaviours and needs of relevant creatures).

Veikko Eranti (University of Helsinki, Demos Helsinki) discussed Democratic Futures and the Democratic Crafting of Social Contracts. Eranti noted the concept of “doing society” through situated action and three cultures of engagement: techno-rationalist problem-solving, self-transformation into a respectable citizen, and instrumental collectivism. He highlighted the death of the Finnish organisational society, which necessitates a re-negotiation of the rules for creating social contracts, moving from descriptive representation to constructive representation (the idea that society must always be constructed anew).

Finally, Maja Groff (Leiden University, Climate Governance Commission) framed the current moment as an inflexion point at which humanity faces a planetary emergency, noting that the climate and environment have been marginalised in institutional and policy spaces. The governance system is alarmingly fragmented, with over 3 000 international environmental agreements lacking coherence. She advocated for Adaptive Governance and for strengthening the legal system, showcasing the Climate Governance Commission’s work and the strategy of Smart Coalitions—such as the one that created the International Criminal Court—to translate proposals into stronger global governance.

The seminar made clear that social contracts at national, scientific, global, and ecological levels are constantly evolving. Understanding how they shift and imagining what they could become is essential for building fair, sustainable, and meaningful futures.

Urbanity and justice in transition – a new urban agenda for the next two decades

The second session of the Research Encounters chaired by Seona Candy (Demos Helsinki) included themes of changing urbanisation patterns and formal-informal planning tensions, regenerative resilience and justice in urban transitions, and how participation, renovation, and new civic design redefine the urbanist’s agenda.

First, Aleksi Neuvonen and Kaisa Schmidt-Thomé (Demos Helsinki) revisited the traditional urbanisation drivers of the early 2000s (e.g., natural population growth in large cities, knowledge-intensive economy concentration) and contrasted them with new drivers of the 2020s–2030s (e.g., climate mitigation raising living costs unevenly, digital economy concentration). They highlighted a key tension regarding whether the negative effects of concentration (urbanisation externalities) may eventually trigger new decentralisation.

Jeffrey Bolhuis (AP+E & TU Delft) used the Netherlands’ polder landscape—a product of extreme engineering and co-creation—as an example of a country as a machine with cracks, underscoring the need for balance between “control and surrender.” He advocated for Active Surrender and embracing informality in planning, citing examples where informal use has been integrated into city strategy. Embracing informality helps navigate complexity and uncertainty, fostering openness, flexible thinking, and acceptance of doubt. The discussion touched on the post-pandemic reality of remote work and the idea of planning as adaptive action rather than controlling, with trust being key to allowing experimental, humble governance.

When thinking about an Urbanists’ Agenda for the Next 20 Years, Prof. Lorenzo Chelleri (Universitat Internacional de Catalunya) critiqued the current resilience discourse, noting the resilience fallacy where political arenas favour adaptive resilience to maintain the established order, often confusing persistence with sustainability. He argued for Regenerative Resilience, necessary because the current approach often fails to embed justice and suffers from a lack of policy coherence. He noted implementation challenges, such as conflicting agendas (e.g., Formula 1 vs. climate programs in Barcelona) and missing capacities.

Max Stearns (Errantry Media Lab) proposed that design and applied psychological studies could enhance democracy’s effectiveness by addressing its relational and affective shortcomings. The hypothesis is that current democracy models are flawed because they neglect the emotional, affective, and non-logical experiences of democracy, over-privileging language and reason. Stearns questioned how to address these relational inadequacies, particularly by prioritising sensory attentiveness, epistemic pluriversality, and therapeutic engagement over dialectical engagement. He suggested that “Design as Inquiry” and relationally-oriented therapeutic models could diagnose democracy’s relational failures and offer paths toward “Prelational Democracy“—a more meaningful and effective relational democracy that attends to the illogical, affective, and inarticulable experiences of democratic becoming-with.

Maximilian Lewark (HouseEurope) emphasised the urgent need to prioritise building renovation in Europe over new construction, noting the sector’s significant environmental impact (38% of global CO2 emissions and 36% of EU waste). Despite renovations making up over half of the architecture market, only one fourth of European buildings have been renovated, with an annual rate of 1%. At this pace, 75 years are needed to meet the 2050 climate goals. We should focus on new EU legislation, such as tax reductions for renovation and the reuse of materials. Then, affordability, simplicity, and inclusiveness of renovation would be improved. This would yield positive results for housing, employment, energy savings, and the safeguarding of historical integrity.

Moving beyond imagination: Identifying potential avenues for impact

The Research Encounters offered compelling insights into the current directions and potential societal impact of research on sustainability transformations. Given the central role of evidence-based knowledge and research in achieving the crucial climate and biodiversity goals, we were encouraged and inspired by the wide-ranging and diverse possibilities highlighted during the event. This enables a shift from mere imagining to taking tangible actions toward a more sustainable future.

At Demos Helsinki, we adopt a deliberative and pluralistic approach to impact. Rather than adhering to a single theory or predefined path, we prioritise curiosity, constantly seeking out new possibilities and valuing a diversity of ideas. Multidisciplinarity, collaboration, and the elevation of others’ ideas are central to our work. This collective effort prepares us to commit to decisive action when a concrete, high-impact opportunity presents itself, recognising that impact is the cumulative outcome of varied efforts and partnerships.

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