Latest content
Our latest updates, thoughts, and events — as they roll out.
In Imagining Change Through Science – Demos Helsinki Research Encounters, we explored how science and research have shaped societal change.
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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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This scenario report examines how hidden resources in people and communities can be better utilized to tackle the toughest challenges of health and healthcare.
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Digitalisation is no longer about computers; people and physical things are becoming hyperconnected with cheap, abundant sensors resulting in the merging of digital and physical realities. To meet these challenges, Nordic societies look for new ways to prosper in the era of hyperconnectivity while upholding the traditional Nordic values of trust, equality and human-centrism.
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The funding platform for piloting and experimenting is an attempt to combine the strengths of small-scale experiments and RCT’s by encouraging parties engaged in experiments to learn from each other, by providing support measures, and by bringing different stakeholders and actors together to implement and fund experiments and pilots through a digital platform.
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Governing with cities: Europe’s overlooked governance infrastructure
July 21, 2026
The Cities Mission functioned as a natural experiment that revealed an overlooked property of European governance: cities do not merely implement policy more effectively; they generate governing capacity and governance knowledge that Europe should intentionally incorporate into policy design through a revised multilevel governance architecture.
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The next MFF should institutionalise what mission governance has proven
July 21, 2026
The challenge for the next MFF is not to invent a new governance model, but to organise European decision-making around the governing capacity that already exists.
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Governments can steer with wellbeing at the core (but nobody said it was easy)
April 28, 2026
Governments keep promising change and then hitting the same walls with the old machinery. Reorienting governance around human wellbeing is both urgent and possible, and the work continues even when the political climate turns.
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