FLOWISION member presentations at the Annual Meeting of Finnish Geographers 4-5 November

Our team will have two presentations at the Annual Meeting of Finnish Geographers 2021. Our consortium member Sakari Höysniemi will organise a roundtable entitled “Seeking Solutions to Carbon Neutrality through Transdisciplinary Research across Social Sciences and Humanities” together with Tanja Riekkinen (University of Oulu). Roger Norum (University of Oulu) acts as a chair of the session. The session will be held on Friday 5 November at 11:00-12.30 AM virtually via Zoom.

The session aims to unpack how distinct theoretical and methodological approaches in social sciences and humanities enable studying tensions, frictions and similarities in past and contemporary energy transitions in Northern European space.

The session will be started by Johanna Tuomisaari (University of Helsinki) who presents her results of a paper assessing the governance of geothermal energy and the agency of Seismological Institute of Finland as part of governance practices of geothermal energy. Based on policy analysis Tuomisaari explores how the governance of geothermal energy is perceived at the moment and what kind of needs for development actors of the field identify.

Tanja Riekkinen (University of Oulu) explores in her presentation how knowing and understanding the development of previous energy transitions could contribute to the topical energy transition debate. In this effort, I she uses her ongoing dissertation work on the history of Finnish petrofutures as an example.

Sohvi Kangasluoma (University of Helsinki, FLOWISION) discusses in her presentation the Arctic strategies of the five Arctic coastal countries, whose waters are expected to hide a significant share of the world’s remaining oil and gas reserves. She examines how affects are utilized in the establishment and promotion of Arctic policy goals laid out in the strategies and argue that the elusive yet alluring idea of endless natural resources in the Arctic is shaped by encouraging certain affective states.

Sakari Höysniemi (University of Helsinki, FLOWISION) assesses how the imaginary of energy security is attained in Finland vis-à-vis climate change mitigation policies, namely imaginary of energy transition coming from European and global levels. Based on data consisting of expert interviews, governmental and corporate strategies and scenarios that is unpacked with analysis of storylines, the presentation aims to unpack key anticipatory and discursive logics of the debate.

The presentations will be followed by Q&A.