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Our latest updates, thoughts, and events — as they roll out.
Demos Helsinki is currently involved in 14 Horizon Europe projects. From exploring the societal impacts of new technologies to tackling climate challenges, these projects reflect a growing demand for research that sparks systemic change. Discover how we are working across disciplines to shape fairer, more sustainable futures.
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These three research projects are: 1) Reducing polarisation via material participation (MaDem); 2) Coastal waters under pressure – safeguarding a healthy Gulf of Finland in a changing geopolitical and environmental landscape (CoWup); and 3) Safe Water for All (WaterFall).
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We are pleased to announce that the UNDP’s Istanbul Innovation Days (IID), taking place in March 2025, will focus on shaping the next generation of public institutions for a secure and prosperous world.
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While substantial efforts have been made to identify and address issues of environmental justice in urban areas, the question of how to consider and plan for the concerns of humans and other species remains a major challenge. This paper provides a conceptualisation of what ‘justice’ might mean from a multispecies justice (MSJ) perspective within the contexts of nature-based solutions (NBS) and urban sustainability planning. We offer a wider conceptualisation of representation, distribution and agency compared with dominant framings in NBS scholarship and provide exemplar cases on how to integrate these concepts in planning discourse. We critically discuss some of the challenges and opportunities of considering MSJ when confronted by established procedures and practices in NBS science and decision-making, focusing on (i) moving beyond existing standards for biodiversity conservation; (ii) embracing MSJ as a process and practice; and (iii) building the capacity of NBS planners to work with MSJ.
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The report provides insights into how the dominant ways of thinking about growth have taken shape and become entrenched: What has changed over the decades? And what might the future look like? Finnish discourse is also placed in the broader context of international societal and scientific debates, as well as global shifts in the operating environment.
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With the increasing culture of applying piloting as part of technology innovation, the need for understanding its societal implications is becoming more crucial. With the aim of understanding better the power relations, tensions and agencies pivotal to negotiating and embedding ethics across processes, we consider utilizing a framework of “design logics” to the data.
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Retro started turning Smart in Stockholm
June 2, 2014
Smart Retro, a smart city project by Demos Helsinki and its distinguished partners, was kicked off in a spirit of enthusiastic co-operation. The high ambition of the Smart Retro is to turn the massive potential of the 60’s and 70’s buildings stock into a business model innovation that combines energy retrofitting…
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Where lies the value in locality?
April 15, 2014
Last spring Demos Helsinki worked on a report concerning locality and local value. Our approach was to map out the theory and examples of the relationships between locality and the local media, and by organising a workshop in Tampere. A group of influential regional actors from businesses, municipalities, universities and…
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Funding, work, and participation are changing. No biggie.
March 21, 2014
The yearly Computer-Supported Cooperative Work Conference organised in Baltimore in mid-February was a goldmine of state-of-the-art research that crosses the boundaries of the social sciences and information technology. I spoke about a current project that examines the networked hospitality exchange fostered by the Airbnb concept: Account sharing in the context…
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