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Volume 5 Issue 1 2011

specIal 10th annIVersary edItIon

NEWSletterHelsInkI collegIum for adVanced studIes Hcas

n Enhancing Scholarly Excellence. Director Sami Pihlström examines the history and future of the Collegium

n The Birth of the Collegium. Interview with Professor Kari Raivio and Dr. Antti Arjava

n New HCAS Fellows

2 HelsInkI collegIum for adVanced studIes Hcas

EDITORIAL

The Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (HCAS) turns 10 years old this autumn. In order to celebrate this anniversary we are publishing this issue of our biannual newsletter as a special edition which examines the HCAS from various perspectives. Our current Director Sami Pihlström focuses in his article on the history as well as the future of the Collegium as an interdisciplinary institution paying special attention to the ways how institutions

such as the Collegium can promote critical methodological reflection and what kind of challenges this ambitious goal entails. Pihlström’s article is followed by an interview with the former Rector of the University of Helsinki, Professor Kari Raivio, and the current Secretary General of the Finnish Cultural Foundation, Dr. Antti Arjava – both of whom played a fundamental role in establishing the Collegium ten years ago. Raivio and Arjava provide interesting personal insights into the birth of the Collegium and its challenges. Their interview is followed by an article by our former (as well as officially the first) Director, Professor Raimo Väyrynen who reflects upon his period at the Collegium during the years 2002–2004.

This newsletter also focuses on the HCAS from other point of views. Professor Troels Engberg-Pedersen has generously agreed to shed light on his work at the Academic Advisory Board regarding the annual selection of new Fellows to the Collegium. We have also interviewed some of our alumni about the impact their stay at the HCAS has had on their careers. In addition, some of our current Fellows are talking about their on-going research at the HCAS and, as usual at this time of the year, this newsletter also introduces our new Fellows who have joined us this autumn.

Originally, we had planned to include in this newsletter also an article by our former Director, Professor Juha Sihvola, but to our great sadness this had to be cancelled due to personal reasons. This issue is dedicated to all of the persons who have been affiliated with the Collegium since its inception, including its current and former fellows, board members, directors and other staff members as well as its co-operative partners both in Finland and abroad.

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Volume 5 Issue 1 2011 3

ENHANCING SCHOLARLY EXCELLENCE IN AN INTERDISCIPLINARY ENVIRONMENT

The Helsinki collegium for advanced studies is still a young institution, celebrating its tenth anniversary in 2011. Before the

collegium was established as one of the “independent institutions” of the university of Helsinki on January 1, 2001, the university senate (“konsistori”), together with the faculties and many other institutes of the university, considered various options for a new research unit focusing on the humanities and the social sciences. I will describe the short history of the Helsinki collegium in broad strokes, emphasizing developments that are also significant for its future. the early steps of the collegium are described in its first director’s, professor raimo Väyrynen’s article in this newsletter and in the interview with professor kari raivio and dr. antti arjava who played a key role in its emergence.

the Helsinki collegium as an Institute for advanced study the Helsinki collegium was established as the first “institute for advanced study” in finland. the “model” for such institutes

remarks on the History and future of the Helsinki collegium for advanced studies

Sami PihlStröm Professor, Director of the helsinki collegium for ADvAnceD stuDies

is the famous Institute for advanced study in princeton – the place where luminous scientists and mathematicians like albert einstein, kurt gödel and John von neumann worked for decades. the Ias itself found european institutions, particularly all souls college at the university of oxford and the collège de france, among its “models”. today, in any event, the emergence of new institutes for advanced study is largely seen as an american phenomenon in europe and all over the globe.

While the princeton Ias covers all academic fields, organized in four relatively large “schools”, the Helsinki collegium along with its several european sister institutions focuses on the humanities and the social sciences. this does not prevent, say, a person with a doctorate in medicine or physics from becoming a collegium fellow, but it does require that the research s/he plans to conduct is humanistically or social-scientifically oriented. no laboratories or other significant infrastructures and research equipment are available at the collegium. the collegium is, primarily, an ideal environment for concentrated writing and reflection whilst also enabling continuous interaction with scholars representing other disciplines.

probably as a result of the concern for researchers’ careers, the Helsinki collegium initially appointed fellows for relatively long research periods. In the beginning, even five-year terms were given to some outstanding scholars, and the fellowships were in principle (albeit rarely in practice) renewable. today, the collegium has come closer to the standard practice of institutes for advanced study: a fellow can stay at the collegium for a maximum of three years, and there is no possibility for immediate renewal. (a former fellow can, however, reapply after having spent some time elsewhere.) still, even two- or three-year fellowships are long from the perspective of most other institutes for advanced study. many such institutes only invite fellows for six months or one academic year. thus, the Helsinki collegium is in a sense a “hybrid” institution, implementing many of the standard practices of institutes for advanced study but providing most of its

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[continuing from page 3]

fellows with considerably longer research periods than such institutes generally do.

the university of Helsinki asked dr. antti arjava – a classicist who today holds a very influential position at the finnish cultural foundation, one of the most important funding organizations supporting research and the arts in finland – to submit a report on the possibility of establishing such an institute within the university. the report he delivered is still very interesting reading. many of arjava’s suggestions have found their way into the already well established practices and principles of the Helsinki collegium: the need to support basic research (including innovative research that might not easily get any other funding), the enhancement of interdisciplinary interaction, the internationalization of the university and finnish research, flexibility in the length of the research periods, the strong link between the collegium and the regular departments of the university. He also correctly predicted that the collegium might grow from relatively modest beginnings (the first twelve fellows, all finns, were appointed in 2001 and started their collegium projects in august, 2001) to an institute with several dozen scholars.

Interestingly, arjava also noted that “the purpose of the collegium is to give birth to new ideas. Its success can be measured in terms of the changes the fellows make in their plans during their collegium periods; if a scholar completes precisely the kind of work s/he has planned to when arriving at the collegium, the collegium has only partly fulfilled its tasks.” It can indeed be expected that working in a strongly interdisciplinary environment should lead to revisions in a scholar’s research plans and ideas. this expectation, along with the more obvious criteria of the “added value” of the collegium, such as joint interdisciplinary publications and seminars, might perhaps even be developed into an indicator in terms of which the long-term success of the collegium could be measured – though this is not the right place to speculate on how exactly this could be done. obviously there is also a lot of room for variation in the ways

individual scholars modify their research plans during their fellowships. someone might change her/his project dramatically as a result of new contacts with scholars coming from other disciplines, whereas another researcher could be equally successful but make only modest changes. In any case, something should happen to the fellow’s plans and ideas during her/his stay at the collegium: something new should emerge. funding a project that is expected to be modified during its completion is, of course, also a risky business. When hiring a new fellow, the collegium or its director cannot possibly know what exactly will happen. this unpredictability must simply be accepted – and not just accepted but supported and even celebrated as a core value of the collegium – because it is a characteristic feature of academic scholarship at its highest level.

accordingly, the expectation to revise one’s plans during one’s research period is natural as soon as we understand that any truly innovative research – especially in the humanities and the social sciences – is a creative process whose final outcome is always to some extent unpredictable. the collegium is one of the (perhaps too few) places in the academic world that take this unpredictability very seriously and celebrate the fundamental creative “openness” of academic thinking and writing. While “innovation” is a catch word too often used in contemporary academic politics, frequently with short-sighted technocratic and instrumentalist connotations, institutes like the Helsinki collegium cherish the genuinely innovative character of basic research.

this also leads to the need to take academic freedom very seriously. as soon as a person is accepted as a fellow to the collegium, s/he is completely free to pursue her/his research. Whatever “research policies” or strategic plans the collegium may have, they must be operative only at an institutional level, realized for instance in annual themes, the academic programme of symposia and other events, etc., rather than at the level of individual fellows’ research projects, which are the core of the activities

of the collegium. the director and the executive Board may and should come up with strategic plans to develop the research orientations of the collegium in specific ways, for instance by supporting certain kinds of projects or special programmes (cf. below); however, if they sacrifice the academic freedom of the individual fellow, they have given up everything.

unlike some “traditional” institutes for advanced study, such as the Ias in princeton, the national Humanities center in durham, north carolina, and the leading european institutes of this type, for example, the swedish collegium for advanced study (uppsala), the netherlands Institute for advanced study (Wassenaar), and the Wissenschaftskolleg (Berlin), which are completely autonomous and not parts of any other institutions, the Helsinki collegium is a “university-based” institute for advanced study. the collegium is of course dependent on the university of Helsinki as it is one of the university’s units maintained by the university’s own funds; on the other hand, it is an “independent institute” in the sense of not being dependent on, or answerable to, any of the faculties or other departments. thus, its administrative role within the university of Helsinki is analogous to special institutes such as the university of Helsinki library, the aleksanteri Institute (an interdisciplinary research and teaching unit focusing on russian and east-european studies), the natural-scientific museum, and the Institute of Biotechnology, among many others. for the university’s central administration, it is sometimes, understandably, slightly challenging to recognize and appreciate the special needs and differences among these and other quite different special institutes, all of which have their own specific tasks and expectations.

the Helsinki collegium actively cooperates with other institutes for advanced study all over the world, both “independent” ones and “university-based” ones. since its initiation it has thus strongly affirmed its international status as an institute for advanced study. the Helsinki collegium

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joined the european network of Institutes for advanced study (netIas), which currently has 18 member institutes, several years ago; the director and the Head of planning and development represent the collegium at the annual meetings of netIas, most recently at the new europe college in Bucharest, romania, in april, 2011. another international network, university-Based Institutes for advanced study (uBIas), was established only relatively recently; its first international meeting, attended by delegates from all five continents, was organized in freiburg, germany, in october, 2010. the Helsinki collegium was well represented at that meeting and is also involved in the steering group of the uBIas network, whose international academic influence can be expected to grow in the future. furthermore, the collegium has actively collaborated with a more wide-ranging group of “humanities centres and institutes” organized into the consortium for Humanities centers and Institutes (cHcI) and its european version, the european consortium for Humanities Institutes and centers (ecHIc). undoubtedly new european and global contexts for further cooperation endeavours will also emerge in the future.

In all these contexts of international networking, the Helsinki collegium has

been a respected collaboration partner throughout its short existence so far. It is very important for the collegium to continue its international activities and to remain an active, dynamically developing university-based institute for advanced study in the future, hopefully even strengthening and intensifying its role in and contributions to its networks. there is always a lot to learn from, and to contribute to, the practices implemented at similar institutes; in addition to the official networks, informal personal visits to “sister institutes” are also an invaluable part of the international activities of the collegium. even more importantly, through its fellows and alumni, the collegium has established and continues to maintain and expand a vast global network of actual and potential academic collaborators.

there is obviously a lot of variation regarding the expectations that the universities maintaining university-based institutes for advanced study may have. In some cases, such institutes may be, say, more tightly connected with the teaching needs of their home university than in other cases. our ten-year experience with the Helsinki collegium for advanced studies demonstrates, arguably, that a university-based institute for advanced studies can flourish and offer significant contributions to scholarship at a very high international level when it is given a significant degree of autonomy. It is very important, for instance, that the institute can select its own fellows – with the crucial help of the academic advisory Board and the executive Board. autonomy, however, does not mean isolation. from the very beginning, the collegium’s fellows have been expected to establish connections with the university of Helsinki’s regular departments (see below).

themes, research policies and fellowships according to the official description available at our website (www.helsinki.

fi/collegium), the aims of the Helsinki collegium are “to enhance scholarly excellence within humanities and social sciences; to endorse dialogue between different academic orientations; to provide an innovative environment for concentrated study; to encourage theoretical and methodological reflection in research; to promote international visibility of finnish research and interaction between scholars from all over the world.” In practical terms, the ways in which the collegium seeks to achieve these goals must be continuously discussed. all academic and administrative decisions made at the collegium should contribute to the realization of these aims. the core value captured by these pronounced objectives is, again, academic freedom. promoting academic freedom – and reflecting on what it actually means – is all the more important in today’s changing and in many ways challenging academic environment.

at the founding meetings in the autumn of 2000, both the scientific council of the university of Helsinki (in those days chaired by professor Ilkka niiniluoto, who was at the time a Vice-rector and later became rector and eventually, in 2008, chancellor of the university) and the university senate suggested that the collegium should have two or three research themes – at least one broad one and another more narrowly focused one – for periods of five years. this policy, however, has only been partly implemented. occasionally, the annual calls for applications have been partially targeted: for instance, solidarity was the topic of the call for fellowships starting in 2007, while mortality was the topic of the 2011 and 2012 calls. However, the overwhelming majority of collegium fellows have arrived at the collegium on the basis of their individual research proposals without any necessary link to a pre-announced common theme. this has not prevented the fellows from spontaneously organizing into groups of scholars working on related topics. there is no strict research group structure at the collegium – such a model would fit the natural sciences better than the


humanities – but self-organized, loosely thematic groups among the fellows of course naturally emerge each academic year. critical discussion of possible future themes is also always welcome; however, such discussions should not be restricted to our current fellows but should ideally include the academic community much more broadly.

nor are there any disciplinary quotas at the collegium. traditionally, basic humanistic research projects, for example, in history, literature, philosophy and theology, have been relatively strongly represented throughout the ten-year existence of the collegium, but the social and political sciences also continue to flourish. for example, this year (2011) the collegium hosts a number of sociologists, and just a short while ago (2009–2010), international relations research was very strongly represented. avoiding the introduction of any kind of quotas – disciplinary, national, gender or career-stage-related – is extremely important, as the collegium must continuously reaffirm

its fundamental commitment to promoting academic excellence as its key value. this means that the fellows must not only be capable of conducting solid research, they must also be truly outstanding in order to be appointed to the collegium. In practice, given the huge number of excellent applicants with diverse backgrounds, a reasonable balance of disciplines, nationalities and career stages should be taken into consideration in the selection of fellows, but such balancing efforts must never be prioritized at the expense of the applicants’ academic merits and the scholarly quality of their research projects. the annual process of selecting new fellows is complex and carefully organized: the academic advisory Board, which currently has 17 distinguished members (all of them from outside finland), evaluates the applications and meets in Helsinki before submitting its recommendation, that is, a short list of ca. 20–25 of the best candidates. after a statement of the executive Board, the director makes the final appointment decisions.

In addition to establishing inter-disciplinary connections with each other at the collegium, the fellows are also expected to cooperate with other researchers and research groups within the university of Helsinki, especially the city centre campus, whose five faculties – the faculties of theology, law, arts, social science and Behavioral sciences – all operate in fields covered by the collegium. It has, however, been emphasized from the beginning that the collegium is not, and must never become, a rival to the faculties of the university; on the contrary, it contributes to the enrichment of the research profiles of the faculties and the regular departments in important ways. In particular, by attracting top-level scholars from outside the university of Helsinki, the collegium may enable the faculties and departments to recruit foreign faculty members. It promotes research and research-based teaching by encouraging and expecting its fellows to participate in the teaching programmes of the departments. Its interdisciplinary symposia and other events are invariably open to the entire



academic community. moreover, while in the early days of the collegium some research projects funded by the academy of finland were placed at the collegium, current policy is to place such projects – even if they are led by a collegium fellow – at the regular departments. supported by the university, there is no reason for the collegium to compete with other units of the university for the same scarce external research funds.

as all collegium fellows are (and have been from the beginning) expected to have a secondary affiliation at one of the regular departments of the university of Helsinki – an affiliation including a minimal teaching duty – a fellow can very well organize research groups and projects at those departments during her/his collegium period. this could even be seen as an ideal way of intensifying the cooperation between the collegium

and the departments. during its ten-year history, the collegium has occasionally been perceived by some individuals as an isolated “ivory tower” disconnected from the normal life of the university. this unfortunate misconception must be firmly corrected. cooperation within and beyond the university of Helsinki is part of the very idea of the Helsinki collegium. the collegium also actively collaborates with other finnish universities; several former collegium fellows have been appointed to professorships and other senior academic posts not only at the university of Helsinki but also at other universities across the country.

the current very strong international profile of the collegium is apparently something that neither arjava nor others were able to predict in the early planning stage. In his report, arjava suggested that

“some” foreign visiting scholars could be appointed to the collegium. today, more than 50% of the applications (the total number of which was 285 in the most recent call in 2011) come from outside finland, and among the current fellows, more than 40% are foreigners. for many top-level international scholars, the collegium is the route into finnish academia. In addition to the foreign fellows arriving at the collegium through the highly competetitive regular selection process (with an acceptance rate currently around 4%), the collegium has over the past few years hosted as Visiting fellows such highly distinguished scholars as professors Jaakko Hintikka (Boston university), martin kusch (university of Vienna), and James mittelman (american university, Washington, dc), among others. Hintikka and mittelman are also, together with professor martha nussbaum (university of chicago), Honorary fellows of the collegium.

there have been no strict formal procedures for inviting Visiting fellows to the collegium. such invitations are in most cases based on ad hoc considerations. the director and the executive Board obviously play a crucial role in considering potential visitors to be invited. one of the future challenges for the collegium is to make these procedures somewhat more regulated – while avoiding excessive formalization. distinguished Visiting fellows coming from prestigious foreign universities have been, and may in the future be, enormously valuable resources for the collegium and the university of Helsinki in their process of internationalization.

special programmes and external funding the basic funding of the Helsinki collegium has since its founding come from the university of Helsinki’s own funds (instead of the finnish government budget). this funding is primarily spent on maintaining the core fellowship programme, based on the annual application process, as well as the collegium’s administration and related activities. Insofar as the collegium’s fellows receive funding from, say, the academy of finland, their projects are (nowadays) primarily placed at the regular ph

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Former HCAS Director Juha Sihvola speaking at reception for the Jane and Aatos Erkko Foundation in 2008.

departments of the university instead of the collegium, even though a number of academy research fellows still work at the collegium as a result of earlier policies. However, the collegium has also received considerable external funding for very important special programmes that shape its profile in interesting ways.

the kone foundation, one of the private finnish foundations funding projects in the humanities and the arts, has supported the collegium for several years. the kone foundation fellowship programme has since 2004 enabled the collegium to invite scholars from russia and some other eastern-european countries (especially the Baltic countries) for short-term visits, usually for four months. In addition, the kone foundation and the collegium created the kone foundation senior fellowship intended for scholars working on finnish culture and identity; its first holders are dr. anna kuismin (2010–2013) and professor pekka sulkunen (2011–2014). the kone foundation has also supported,

together with the finnish-swedish cultural foundation, the launching (in 2010–2011) of the erik allardt fellowship, a joint visiting fellowship programme with the swedish collegium for advanced study.

In 2008, the Jane and aatos erkko foundation made a generous donation of 2.92 million euros to the university of Helsinki funds, enabling the Helsinki collegium to maintain a visiting professorship, with a focus on studies on contemporary society, including issues of social justice. a residence for the holder of the post, located in downtown Helsinki, is part of this considerable donation. this donation is highly unusual, even unique, in finnish academic life. the first two holders of the Jane and aatos erkko chair have been professors stephen gill (york university, canada, 2009–2010) and alan Warde (university of manchester, uk, 2010–2012). the visiting professor is appointed for one or two academic years. a special selection committee has been set up to consider future appointments.

this well-established, successful co-operation with the kone foundation and the Jane and aatos erkko foundation has been supplemented by equally successful new openings with other private foundations. the Helsingin sanomat foundation funded a three-year fellowship with a focus on media studies (professor charles Husband, 2008–2011), and the alfred kordelin foundation has provided substantial support for the new Writer programme, to be implemented during the academic year 2011–2012. the collegium also received the very special argumenta project grant from the finnish cultural foundation for the interdisciplinary project “Human mortality”, closely connected with the annual theme of 2011–2012. another new programme, implemented in 2011, is the eurIas fellowship programme in which the Helsinki collegium collaborates with 14 other netIas member institutes. this new initiative is partly funded by the eu commission (marie curie funds).

While individual collegium fellows’ externally funded projects should, as was


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explained above, be primarily placed at the regular departments, in order to strengthen the cooperation between the collegium and other units of the university, it is important for the collegium to continue to attract external funding organizations’ interest in its special programmes and new innovative “funding packages”. there is a lot of work to be done in this direction in the future. at this point, I want to take the opportunity of once again warmly thanking our external supporters – both the “old” ones, such as the kone foundation, the Jane and aatos erkko foundation and the Helsingin sanomat foundation, and the “new” ones, such as the alfred kordelin foundation and the finnish cultural foundation – for their very important contributions to maintaining and developing high quality scholarship in finland and to crossing traditional disciplinary boundaries in novel ways. I very much look forward to future cooperation with these and other funding organizations.

administration

the administration team of the Helsinki collegium has grown rather modestly from the early years, even though the size and activities of the institution have multiplied. clearly, a research institution hosting approximately fifty fellows (including Visiting fellows as well as fellows arriving within one or another special programme) requires a skilful, well-organized administration. the administrative staff is still very small, compared to many other institutes for advanced study. the collegium administration is headed by the Head of planning and development, currently dr. minna franck. she is responsible to the director for the effective functioning of the administration, which includes two programme coordinators, an office secretary, a communications secretary and a programme assistant.

dr. antti arjava acted as the director

of the collegium before the appointment of its first official director, raimo Väyrynen, a former professor of International relations at the university of Helsinki, who had left finland for the university of notre dame in the 1990s. Before Väyrynen’s arrival in 2002, dr. panu minkkinen also acted as the director for a short period. after Väyrynen’s move to the academy of finland in 2004, his successor, Juha sihvola, professor of general History at the university of Jyväskylä, was the director of the collegium in 2004–2009; before sihvola’s arrival, minkkinen was again the acting director for a few months. I was appointed as sihvola’s successor in 2009. (It is a curious coincidence that the director of the collegium has now twice come from the university of Jyväskylä, as I moved to the collegium by taking a leave from my chair in practical philosophy at that university.) one of my first tasks as the director was to guide the collegium through the somewhat chaotic 2010 university reform. several new


regulations and practices were established during my first year as the director.

Whereas the director is appointed on the basis of an open call, the deputy directors – currently dr. sari kivistö and dr. anne Birgitta pessi – are selected from amongst the fellows working at the collegium. In this way, the fellows are strongly represented in the collegium’s administration team. the executive Board is responsible for appointing the deputy directors. the main task of the deputy directors is to replace the director whenever s/he is unavailable and to act, together with the director and the Head of planning and development, as an unofficial steering group of the collegium. for the director, it is vital to have partners,

with whom s/he can regularly converse and consult, and whose comments on both urgent decisions and strategic long-term matters are often invaluable. the deputy directors do not need to have any particular tasks, but recently some specific duties, such as the editing of the electronic publishing series COLLeGIUM (see below), have been delegated to them.

the director is primarily responsible to the executive Board, which is also appointed by the rector. during its ten-year history there have been five chairs of the executive Board of the Helsinki collegium: professors Ilkka niiniluoto, mirja saari, fred karlsson, arto Haapala and currently (since 2010) risto eräsaari. (professor eräsaari has been

a member of the executive Board since the very beginning, 2001; he is the first chair of the executive Board to come from the faculty of social science instead of the faculty of arts.) earlier, the executive Board made the appointment decisions, but nowadays its most important tasks are related to long-term strategic issues. It approves the target programme and the budget of the collegium and discusses important matters of principle – including any matter that the director finds important enough to bring to its consideration. the Board, consisting of nine members and their personal deputies, currently has as its members several senior professors representing the university city centre campus faculties, with a number of deans and Vice-deans included. there is also one member representing the fellows and the staff of the collegium, as well as a graduate student member.

In addition to the executive Board, the academic advisory Board also plays a key role in the development of the Helsinki collegium, especially in the extremely sensitive annual process of selecting the fellows. according to the regulations of the collegium, the academic advisory Board must have at least ten members (it currently has 17). It is also appointed by the rector. one interesting development in the academic advisory Board is that while it initially also had finnish members, including, for example, professors erik allardt and uskali mäki, it has for some years now been completely international with no finns as members. no formal rule prevents finnish experts from being appointed as members, but in a small country with a small research community it may be healthier to rely on the services of outside experts in order to avoid conflicts of interest. on the other hand, it is important that at least some of the members are reasonably familiar with the finnish university system.

life at the collegium In december 2002, an opening celebration was organized in these premises with a keynote speech in honour of the new collegium delivered by professor Björn Wittrock, principal of the swedish


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collegium for advanced study, today a long-time friend and collaborator of the Helsinki collegium and one of our academic advisory Board members. His words may serve as a reminder of the true character of the Helsinki collegium and its sister institutions: “centres of advanced study are spaces where only the curiosity of the scholar should determine the direction of research, and the inner logic of scholarly work should be the sole criterion of their operation.”

the fellows are free to pursue their own research during their collegium term – and also to revise and modify their plans on the basis of their interdisciplinary interactions with other fellows (see above). they do not have any administrative responsibilities (and only minimal teaching duties, as explained above), and they are indeed expected to use their academic freedom to focus on their research projects. Ideally,

something completely new might emerge even from purely coincidental encounters in the common room or other common spaces at the collegium. this reminds us of the remarkable fact that the ways in which university premises are used is by no means a trivial matter; organizing office space, coffee rooms, etc., may have genuine effects on the development of academic research. the collegium was given its current premises on fabianinkatu 24 in the heart of the city centre campus of the university in 2004, after having spent two years in the porthania building next door.

the Helsinki collegium annual calendar is usually full of interesting academic symposia and other events mostly organized by the fellows themselves. some of them are “official” Helsinki collegium events – and also financially supported by the collegium – while others are smaller workshops the fellows

may organize for their close collaborators, coming from both finland and abroad. the highlights of the academic year include the annual collegium lecture (almost since the very beginning, 2003) and the Jane and aatos erkko professor’s annual symposium (since 2010). the annual collegium lecture has brought so far nine distinguished guests to the collegium: carlo ginzburg, paul rabinow, Julia annas, mary kaldor, deborah cameron, John dunn, marc Hauser, Vivian sobchack and Jacquelynne eccles.

as the activities of the collegium have grown over the years along with the number of fellows, it is today quite impossible realistically to expect all the fellows to attend all our academic events, except the most important ones, such as the annual collegium lecture. the fellows do, however, have a strict obligation to show up and give one presentation per


year at the internal “Brown Bag” seminar meeting every tuesday during the autumn and spring terms. this seminar is a forum for the fellows to get to know each other’s research better. Ideally, it can and should lead to interdisciplinary encounters and perhaps unexpected collaboration projects. different formats for the seminar have been experimented with over the years; no consensus has ever been reached on how an ideal Brown Bag seminar should be organized. thus, this seminar is today basically a forum for presenting some key ideas of the fellows’ individual research projects and for opening them to critical yet collegial discussion. some sessions take the form of thematic panels, while others consist of individual paper presentations.

another regular element in the internal programme of the collegium is a bimonthly lunch, which the collegium provides for its fellows and staff. In some other institutes for advanced study, the fellows meet for lunch on a daily basis, but we do this in our slightly more modest finnish style. the fellows and staff have also spontaneously set up activities that support collegiality and especially the foreign fellows’ integration into the scholarly community, such as a film club and family club. a social programme ranging from occasional museum visits to an annual field day at the suomenlinna sea fortress, typically in early June, is also organized.

Bibliographical note While avoiding scholarly documentation and references in this historical essay, I have used as my sources administrative documents of the university of Helsinki (e.g., minutes of the relevant meetings of the university senate), as well as Björn Wittrock’s “Institutes for advanced study: Ideas, Histories, rationales” (keynote speech on the occasion of the Inauguration of the Helsinki collegium for advanced studies, university of Helsinki, december 2, 2002). a recent brief history of the princeton Ias is linda g. arntzenius, Institute for advanced study (charleston, nc: arcadia publishing, 2011).

In 2006, both an open-access peer-reviewed electronic publishing series, COLLeGIUM, and the biannual HCAS Newsletter were established as publishing channels of the collegium. In addition, an annual report is published to document the activities of each academic year. the communications secretary is responsible for these publications, while the deputy directors act as the general editors of the COLLeGIUM series. the series also has an editorial Board whose members are fellows at the collegium. most issues in the series, nine of which have appeared to date, are interdisciplinary collections of articles based on symposia organized at the collegium.

the daily life of the Helsinki collegium is, then, a true mixture of highly intellectual

conversations and more everyday discussions of anything that might be of interest to human beings. In particular, critical reflection on research methodologies is mentioned as one of the aims of the collegium, along with the most fundamental goal of enhancing scholarly excellence in the humanities and the social sciences and the related objectives of promoting international and interdisciplinary interaction in these fields. after ten years, a lot has been done, but a lot more critical reflection is still needed. this critical yet collegial pursuit of truth is precisely the “added value” the Helsinki collegium for advanced studies seeks to produce with increasing intensity through its multifarious activities.

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HelsInkI collegIum for adVanced studIes Hcas 13

dr. antti arjava professor kari raivio

Birth of the collegiumInterview with professor kari raivio and dr. antti arjava

The establishment of the Helsinki collegium for advanced studies in the early 2000s was greatly influenced by kari raivio, then rector of the university of Helsinki, and by antti arjava, current secretary general of the finnish

cultural foundation, who carried out the preparatory work. We asked the two to look back on the collegium’s birth and the challenges involved.

In the name of interdisciplinarityone of the key reasons for the collegium being established was the need to support the humanities and social sciences, which, it was feared, would fall behind other academic fields in terms of resourcing. In kari raivio’s opinion, the interdisciplinary approach emphasised by the university of Helsinki makes it crucial to secure equal development opportunities in all fields. Hence, supporting the humanities and social sciences seemed especially important at a time when the fields of medicine and natural sciences had recently gained access to new campuses and the Biomedicum research and education centre.

raivio: “though all of the faculties of arts and social sciences had excellent individual researchers and groups, and – with the exception of the faculty of law – the academy of finland’s centres of excellence, research funding was scarce in these fields. the private sector was of no help (except possibly in

the field of economics), funding from foundations was fiercely competitive, and the disciplines’ small coefficients used in the allocation of university budget funding assured that scarcity would continue. However, it did not seem a good idea to support faculties, but instead focus on good individual researchers, and to do so based on competition. In order to explore various options to put the funding idea into practice, I recruited antti arjava, whom I had previously entrusted with managing the first comprehensive research assessment exercise in the university of Helsinki to a successful completion.”

according to antti arjava, in charge of preparatory investigations, the collegium’s establishment was essentially influenced by the Institute of Biotechnology, founded by the university of Helsinki in the 1990s.

arjava: “the crucial spark came from the Institute of Biotechnology (BI). I led the international evaluation of the university’s research in 1999. In the process, my attention was drawn to the position of BI, which brought together top researchers in relevant fields using outside funding. since BI was evaluated as an independent unit and it was well resourced, it received top scores. In turn, the departments whose researchers had been “captured” by the Institute felt the situation was unfair. the tension was truly tangible in the evaluation. I began to wonder how BI’s image problems could


be avoided within the university and whether another institute model would be better suited to the humanities. In the course of the evaluation I and the rector discussed this, mainly toying with the idea. I do not know whether he got the same idea irrespective of me – perhaps we were both encouraged by our talks. for me, at least, it all remained just a game of ideas until after the evaluation when the rector invited me, Vice-rector Ilkka niiniluoto and planning officer esa Hämäläinen (my colleague in the evaluation) to dinner to talk about his idea of looking into ways to grant additional funding to the humanities from the university’s own funds. after this, I was not taken by great surprise when the rector soon offered me the post of rapporteur.”

according to arjava, the idea of a research unit resembling the collegium primarily resulted from the discussions between then rector kari raivio, Vice-rector Ilkka niiniluoto and himself. kari raivio’s background in the natural sciences played a critical role in enabling the idea to be carried into practice despite the objection of some faculties.

arjava: “for the sake of clarity, it should be pointed out that the only kind of science policy work behind the new idea was that carried out by raivio, niiniluoto and myself. the faculties were sceptical, reserved or negative. they would have preferred additional assets without any changes being made to operations. the faculties of natural sciences were not particularly enthusiastic about supporting the humanities in the first place, but could not openly oppose the idea either. I’m sure a rector with a background in the humanities could never have pushed additional funding through in the university senate.”

for arjava, increasing funding as such was not the main motive for setting up a unit like the collegium. What was more important was creating a brand new form of funding:

arjava: “fields in the humanities chronically complain about the lack of outside funding, this seems understandable in the light of statistics, though funding is not distributed equally across the natural sciences either. While I found the increase in funding to be motivating as such, what I wanted most of all was to create a new financing model, a collaborative organisation that would half force researchers from different fields to work together. sufficient additional funding was necessary to get sceptical faculties to support the project. raivio never set the “institute model” as a condition for funding, but I assume that was what he was hoping for and believed I would propose (instead of pure distribution of funds without changes made to structures). In the past other people had suggested that the university should establish an Institute for advanced study, but these plans were never realised, and I Iearnt of them only much later. nor were the foreign Institutes a direct source of inspiration”

In arjava’s opinion, the investigation carried out in preparation of the collegium’s establishment did not propose to answer any clearly delineated science policy targets but primarily aimed to create a research community linking different disciplines in a way that would get the senate’s approval.

arjava: “talking about ’science policy targets’ in this context may suggest broad strategic discussion within the university,

which never took place. my objective was to create an interdisciplinary institute, and I was supported by raivio and niiniluoto in this. the plan’s general outlines more or less matched my own views, but were fine-tuned and emphasised depending on what needed to be included in the plan for it to get the senate’s approval. In that sense, of course, you could talk about science policy.”

divided opinionsthe report prepared by antti arjava drew praise, but also criticism. one of the problematic issues pointed out was the fundamental notion behind the plan: that of providing additional support to research in the humanities and social sciences. for example, in its statement on arjava’s report, the faculty of agriculture and forestry emphasised that, if implemented, the proposal would create an automatic channel of funding for research in the humanities and social sciences, and the social relevance of research topics would no longer play a key role in the allocation of funding. correspondingly, the faculty of science felt the university of Helsinki should only support the collegium if it led to an increase in outside funding to the research fields represented by the collegium.

according to kari raivio, the goal was not to separate any specific type of research from evaluation based on social impact. In his view, the criticism that some faculties expressed towards the report was based on the notion that their own research was, by nature, of high quality and socially relevant. “apart from being arrogant, such a notion is also mistaken,” says raivio and continues:

“the importance of academic knowledge cannot be assessed based on its ability to attract outside funding. for more than 20 years the university has annually granted ‘large research subsidies’ to researchers of all faculties depending on the quality, not relevance, of research. In any case, who is to decide if research is relevant or not? the quality of research can, however, be evaluated from an international perspective, and I would claim that high-quality research is always relevant. I must admit I’ve met natural scientists who are ready to accept research in their own field, however mediocre, but look down their nose at research in the humanities and social sciences despite it being greatly applauded by experts. Worrying unnecessarily about social interaction may hide the fact that the university serves society best by providing young people with a good education as well as carrying out high-quality research.”

the project’s success depended on convincing sceptical faculties of its usefulness.

arjava: “my first task was to get the faculties mainly benefiting from the project to support it. I started with fred karlsson, dean of the faculty of arts, who was not all that enthusiastic about the institution model at first, but who, after constructive talks, promised to support my project and did so. theologians and lawyers were more positive from the very beginning, and the behavioural sciences were reasonably easy to bring around. the administration in the faculty of social sciences opposed it until the very end, as can be seen from their statement. What with some forces in the faculty showing support for


the idea, in the end the faculty did not offer total resistance to the project.”

placing the focus of research between basic and applied research was another bone of contention, dividing opinions. as arjava explains, his ultimate goal was to come up with a compromise satisfactory to all parties.

arjava: “the key goal of my preparatory work was the creation of a interdisciplinary institute. In this respect, obtaining additional funding was a necessary, but secondary, objective. Because of this, I would rather not pay all that much attention to, for example, the division between basic and applied research. I myself worked in basic research, and I am sure most of the researchers in the fields in question believed they benefited most from the ‘basic research’ slogan. since the opinion-forming group also included applied researchers, we could not place too much emphasis on the basic side. Instead, the collegium had to offer something to everyone. after all, it is the researchers’ selection process that ultimately determines the institute’s profile. I balanced between thematic and individual applications for this same reason. Both had their avid supporters, though I believe the thematic side was promoted more by natural scientists, who saw other alternatives as being directionless anarchy. I think both have their advantages and I still endorse what I wrote in my report.”

from institute to collegium though the project was sparked by the Institute of Biotechnology, arjava believed it was essential to create a radically different

independent institute. this arose from the project’s major challenge: the fear of the new organisation becoming an independent institute, which, parasite-like, would utilise the resources of other institutes. this also influenced the name of the institute.

arjava: “the main obstruction to the project came from the fear that the institute would grow into a young cuckoo consuming the resources and prime forces of departments. this made it imperative for the model to clearly distance itself from the Institute of Biotechnology. Because of this, it was called collegium instead of Institute, which would have worked equally well if not better. the final result was more or less what I had originally planned. although everyone in the senate (unions, students, faculties) had their own targets, in the end we were not forced to make too many compromises to buy support.”

In the original plans, the collegium was not located in its current facilities. the premises played a key role in the report, seeing that interdisciplinary research cooperation requires suitable and functional facilities.

arjava was first hoping to place the collegium in the main building of the botanical garden, which would have been perfect in terms of the location, elegant building and garden. at the time, the plans were to move the botanical museum housed in the building to Viikki, contrary to the museum’s own wishes. the move would have freed the facilities for other use.

However, the premises, which were protected and designed to be used as a botanical museum, proved to be poorly suited to the collegium. the university senate finally decided the building would continue to be used for its original purpose, and the collegium was established in its current facilities on fabianinkatu.

Main building of the Kaisaniemi Botanic Garden and Herbarium.

photo: antti sadinmaa


arjava: “When the senate, after tough talks, decided the building would remain in its original use, I found it was a justified solution – but I admittedly felt a bit wistful. fabianinkatu is probably the next best alternative in terms of location.”

reaching out to the global academic communityarjava’s report emphasised the idea of the collegium operating as an independent institute, which especially served researchers of the university of Helsinki. over the years, however, the collegium has evolved into a primarily international unit, whose researcher positions are open to everyone irrespective of their home university. raivio is satisfied with this.

raivio: “one of the main problems of universities in finland and the other nordic countries is their inward-looking attitude, which in the long run has a similar degenerative impact as inbreeding in human and animal populations. all measures that increase mobility between domestic and international universities should be supported. this is why I am pleased with the approach adopted by the collegium.”

arjava, too, fails to see any problem involved.arjava: “the idea expressed in the report that the majority of researchers would come from the university of Helsinki and that international participants (and people from outside Helsinki) would be the exception rather than the rule, mirrored my own goals. I found it more important to mix disciplines than nationalities. In terms of tactics, it was probably the only option, since faculties had to feel that a big enough share of funds flowed to their own researchers. International researchers now account for a considerably larger share than originally planned, meaning that the collegium more closely corresponds to its models in other countries. I do not find

this to be negative in any way, just a bit different from the original objective.”

In arjava’s report, the collegium’s administration consisted of a director, steering committee, board and academic advisory board. However, the administration model ultimately adopted when the collegium was set up gave the director a stronger role than that proposed in arjava’s report, and the steering committee was given up. according to raivio, the final administrative model was similar to that adopted in the university’s other independent institutes (biotechnology, physics and information technology), where it has proved functional. He believes that the international academic advisory board is necessary, but sees no similar need for a steering committee.

raivio: “though academic communities have traditionally avoided strong leaders, the internal and external pressures for change in universities have made good leadership a necessity.”

similarly, the original idea of rectors being strongly represented in the collegium’s administration was abandoned. to function, a research community such as the collegium needs a certain degree of autonomy, which is why raivio dismisses the idea of including a rectorate on the advisory board dealing with academic content. However, he does not find the Vice-rector chairing the advisory board to be an impossible idea.

collegium now and in the futureone of the fundamental ideas in the establishment of the collegium was to set up a research unit that would advance interdisciplinarity at the university of Helsinki and serve both its own members and the rest of the university. We asked raivio if he feels the Helsinki collegium has brought the university the kind of added value its establishment aimed at. We also asked him to estimate whether the collegium’s activities have brought

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any surprising results, that is, whether they have offered any unexpected added value.

raivio: “When the collegium was founded and set up in joint facilities, the goal was to create a community whose activities would provide considerable added value to its members and consequently to the university. common lectures and seminars, as well as daily meetings and discussions with representatives from both neighbouring and more remote disciplines create an atmosphere that gives rise to new ideas and offers more depth to one’s own research. I don’t have the competence to evaluate the scholarly results of the collegium’s researchers, but I know that outsiders have made very positive statements about them. a notable donation made to the collegium shows that its purpose and activities have also gained recognition outside the university and academic community.”

While the Helsinki collegium has also arranged thematic application processes, the majority of research posts have been granted to individual researchers and their own research topics. In other words, the collegium does not have a strong research policy, which follows the spirit of arjava’s report. this, however, was criticised in some of the statements made about the report. If the collegium for advanced studies were established now, would the university, in raivio’s opinion, opt for a similar operating principle?

raivio: “compared to the natural sciences, research in the humanities and social sciences has relied more on the ideas and work of individual researchers than on cooperation in large groups. the collegium’s unspecified application process and evaluation based solely on scholarly quality are well suited to this tradition, and the same principles have later been applied by the european research council (erc) as well.”

However, raivio sees some room for improvement in the allocation of the collegium’s resources both in terms of content and individuals.

raivio: “I would allocate some of the resources to promoting activities that are urgently needed today. one example involves cooperation with the natural sciences to investigate world-threatening changes, such as global warming, as well as their consequences. the tools and resources of the natural sciences are simply not enough on their own. my other concern in terms of research policy has more to do with people than with content. I believe the collegium should try to more effectively support the career development of promising young researchers rather than offer sabbaticals to university professors who already have an established position. these, however, are the private thoughts of a pensioner, and I fully trust the insight of the university’s and the collegium’s current administration as concerns developing the operating concept.”

In the end, the collegium was not implemented quite like antti arjava envisioned in his preparatory work. one of the key ideas in his report was to set up an interdisciplinary research community that would engender discussions and create new networks. How has the collegium succeeded in this task? does the collegium for advanced studies in its current form work towards the goals originally set for it?

arjava: “I have later followed the collegium’s activities only from a safe distance. I have heard both praise and criticism, but it is difficult for me to say how justified it is. my educated guess is that communication between researchers from different disciplines has not gone quite as smoothly as I originally hoped for: people move around in their own circles rather than create new and functioning cooperation relationships. perhaps I was something of an idealist in this respect. Whether things could be improved with more systematic measures is a good question.“


TWO YEARS AT THE NEW COLLEGIUM raimo VäyryNENdIrector of Hcas In 2002–2004

The decision to establish the Helsinki collegium for advanced studies was prompted by several underlying factors. perhaps the

main reason was internal to the university; there was widespread discontent among scholars in the social sciences and humanities that they had been sidelined in the distribution of university resources. the 1990s and the early 2000s had witnessed a construction boom in the physical and biosciences with the campus systems in kumpula, meilahti and Viikki being expanded and modernized.

against this backdrop, the annual investment of some three million euros in the collegium involved only a minor sum. yet rector kari raivio and others involved in the early phases of the collegium deserve praise for what they did to promote advanced studies in the humanities and social sciences at the university of Helsinki. Ilkka niiniluoto, subsequently rector and chancellor of the university, served as the first chair of the collegium’s Board and helped both to initiate and stabilize its role within the university community. the collegium had received a jump-start with the foundational work that antti arjava had contributed in its very early stages.

another reason for the decision to establish the collegium was the ambition of the university to strengthen its reputation as a major research university in europe. this effort was manifested in the decision of the university to join other leading universities in leru (leading european research universities). again, kari raivio was a leading figure in implementing this ambitious policy.

during my two-year tenure at the head of the collegium I visited sister institutions

at the university of edinburgh and stanford university as well as Wissenschaftcolleg zu Berlin and collegium Budapest to involve the Helsinki collegium in a growing network of european institutions for advanced studies. It is probably fair to say that there were some doubts about whether the collegium was strong and independent enough to qualify as a member of the very limited group of similar european institutions.

However, swedish colleagues – especially Björn Wittrock at the swedish collegium for advanced studies in social sciences (scass) and dag Bränström at riksbankens Jubileumfond – helped to smooth our way to european networks. Björn’s central position in the european networks, in addition to his research career, was the reason for inviting him to give the keynote address at the inaugural event of the collegium in early december 2002. His extensive analysis of the idea of advanced research was subsequently published by the collegium under the title “Institutes for advanced study: Ideas, Histories, rationales”.

the third reason for the decision to set up the collegium seems to have been associated with the dismal condition of post-doctoral studies in finland. In effect, the science policy of the country, directed by the ministry of education, strongly favoured the expansion of doctoral education, for which the annual figure of 1,600 phds was set as the target. In its own way, this was a successful policy, but it forgot the “valley of death” into which the freshly minted doctors would fall if they wanted to pursue a serious research career as postdocs and beyond.

the academy of finland was in fact the only funding institution, in addition

to a few foundations, that could finance postdoctoral research. the resources of finnish universities were, at best, very limited in that regard. obviously, the collegium has not solved all the dilemmas regarding opportunities for postdoctoral research, but it certainly has made a positive contribution.

It has been very clear from the outset that the researchers at the collegium must focus on basic research, sometimes even on esoteric topics, and that the positions must be time-limited. there has also been a strong preference for inter- and transdisciplinary research. the application process has been very competitive throughout the collegium’s existence; a position at the collegium has been an opportunity to promote one’s research career, not a guarantee of long-term employment.

though there has been some debate from the very beginning on whether the selection process should favour those coming from within finland, either the university of Helsinki or other finnish universities, the principle of a level playing field has been all along the guiding idea. the key challenge seems to be ensuring that international scholars coming to the collegium will remain integrated in the finnish research community even after their departure. to enjoy a nice sabbatical in Helsinki should not be seen by scholars as sufficient reason for applying to (or receiving an appointment at) the collegium.

another challenge seems to be the balance between the scholars in the humanities and social sciences in the research staff of the collegium. occasionally, social scientists, especially those who are more empirically oriented, have felt that their merits have not been adequately considered in the application


TWO YEARS AT THE NEW COLLEGIUM

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process. However, the members of the International academic advisory Board have represented all relevant fields and have assured the necessary quality control in the appointment process.

one practical step in the international-ization of the collegium was the continuing grant made by the kone foundation to sup-port in particular scholars coming from rus-sia and the Baltic countries to the collegium. this funding was secured over a couple of meals I had with Hanna nurminen of the foundation in 2003. this was one of the easiest fundraising efforts during my career as Hanna immediately realized that it was in the best finnish interest to develop closer re-lations with scholars in countries neighbour-ing ours who had not had a chance during the soviet days to conduct serious research, especially in the social sciences.

personally, my appointment as the director of the collegium in the spring 2002 meant returning from the united states to finland. In 1978-1993 I had served as professor of International relations and in 1989-93 as the dean of social sciences at

the university of Helsinki. In 1993 I moved to the university of notre dame in the united states where I served as a tenured professor of government and director of the kroc Institute for International peace studies until 2002 (with one-year sabbatical at Harvard in 1998-99). When my wife wanted to return to finland, I had to find a new job there and, luckily enough, I was appointed to lead the collegium.

my close to two years at the collegium was filled with practical work; organizing the international process of appointing researchers, finding a permanent place for the collegium to locate its researchers, and fostering, as best I could, a productive and inspiring work place. In these efforts, I was immensely helped by panu minkkinen, who was the associate director, as well as Iris sinervuo, who knew the university bureaucracy well and maria soukkio, who was recruited from among some 200 candidates to deal with both the international and domestic collaboration of the collegium.

I had planned to serve at least one

five-year term at the collegium, but it was cut short by my appointment in march 2004 as the president of the academy of finland, which is the main funding agency for basic research in finland. from my point of view, I had made a contribution to getting the collegium started and in creating a foundation for further expansion and improvement. It was very helpful that the key people deciding about money and infrastructure at the university, starting from toivo Vanhatalo, the key real-estate person at the university, appreciated that the collegium was one of the university’s priority projects.

for me, the brief period there was a rewarding experience. as in most new institutions, the researchers and staff felt the need to prove that their work was worth the investment that the university had made in them from its own resources. as a simple-minded political scientist, it was inspiring for me to have a chance to talk with rising and accomplished experts in linguistic studies, psychology, literary theories and other fields.


SELECTING THE VERY BEST AND INTERDISCIPLINARITY:

on the Work of the Hcas academic advisory Board

troElS ENgBErg-PEdErSEN, memBer of the AcADemic ADvisory BoArD in 2007–2011

the Helsinki collegium for advanced studies is something of a miracle, which does the university of Helsinki (and

finland) great honour. coming from denmark, where for a few years around 2000 we did have something similar, which was then quickly closed down by a new government, one can only look at Hcas with deep envy. moreover, the existence of such an institution in finland is completely in line with the fact that higher education in the social sciences and humanities is so highly valued in finnish public consciousness that no other nordic country is anywhere near being competitive in this regard. all the more reason then to reflect on the procedures that are in place at Hcas for making the collegium a success.

Here I have been asked – as a former member of the academic advisory Board (aaB) for five years between 2007 and 2011 – to analyse critically in retrospect how the aaB works with a view to assessing (1) the integrity of the process and in particular (2) how the board handles the always difficult issue of interdisciplinarity. I am delighted to be able to contribute to elucidating these two central tasks of the aaB, not just on the basis of my own knowledge from the inside of how the aaB works, but also by bringing in for comparison my experience from the danish research council for the Humanities, of which I am a member (since 2008).

What I propose to do here is to give the reader some sense of how the aaB goes about its work every year and to identify

as we go along how it maintains the all-important integrity of the process and handles the interdisciplinarity issue.

stage 1every fall the seventeen international members of the aaB are presented with the task of reducing the approximately 300 applications we receive from all over the world to about 50. all applications are allotted to two board members, namely, those who are closest in discipline to the topic of the given application. and then we all read, and read, and read! the result of our efforts at this stage is an assessment that evaluates a number of obvious requirements concerning the proposed research topic, the qualifications of the applicant, etc., all of which is summarized in a grade on a line from 1 to 10 (with 10 being the highest). When the collegium receives these reports, it selects – by a complicated, but mechanical procedure of ‘weighing’ the grades – those applications that fall below a given line and those that will be included among the fifty lucky ones.

Here is the first problem. suppose both assessments more or less agree on the mark of a given application. In that case, one can probably be pretty certain that if the mark is below the given line, then that application would never stand a chance in the aaB as a whole. Here, then, it seems fair to think that the integrity of the selection procedure has been fully preserved. But suppose that there is a discrepancy of three or more marks between the two assessments. does that not render the evaluation procedure problematic? Here Hcas has applied a procedure of sending the given application to a third evaluator from the board, who

is not told what the two others have said. and the result? almost always the mark of the third evaluator will lie somewhere in between those of the two others. I think there is a lesson here: academic evaluators are very different; and they obviously have their scientific likes and dislikes. It seems to me, however, that the system with the third evaluator actually works. and the reason is that there are in fact solid scientific criteria that all members of the aaB know by heart and attempt to apply consistently throughout.

Here is the second problem. the task of reading more than 50 applications for each member of the aaB is a very onerous one. It may even take weeks. and who has time for that? Hcas certainly pays a sum for it, but world-class researchers are rarely in want of money. the result has been that not all appointed members of the aaB stay on the board for their full tenure. Hcas goes to extremes to make the work they require from the aaB members as pleasant as possible, not least when we all meet in Helsinki (stage 2, see below). But even that may not be enough to keep members on board. can anything be done to ameliorate this situation? probably not. the aaB at Hcas must be filled – and is filled – by people who can see the academic and scientific value of both Hcas as such and of their own work for Hcas. and that is a sentiment that cannot be generated with money.

I think the conclusion to be drawn from the work that is done by aaB members at stage 1 is that this work reflects nothing but the desire on the part of all involved to reach the best possible result for Hcas. that, at least, is the sense I have had through my own five years there.


stage 2at the January meeting in Helsinki itself all board members come together for about two days in order to reduce the 50 lucky applications to about 25. of course, there is only room for about half that number of new fellows every year. so why 25?

this is in fact a good question. When I began in the aaB, we were basically asked to draw up a list of applicants, the size of which would be limited to the number of new fellowships available at the time and that would eventually be appointed. now the system has been changed so as to allow both the Board and eventually the director alone to put together the final list. one may argue both for and against this procedure. on the positive side is a consideration that must in fact have a very high priority: fellows – in particular those coming from abroad – must have, at least the potential for, good contacts with the various academic milieus at the university of Helsinki; and this is something that the director is probably better able to ascertain than a group of scientists coming from all over the world. also, fellows must be able to ‘play together’ at the collegium itself; again, this is something that the director is probably best placed to achieve.

However, if forced to choose between these two options, I would probably settle for the principle of leaving everything with the aaB. mind you, the director takes part in the aaB’s Helsinki meeting, and both the directors that I have known have done that in the best way imaginable, namely, leaving the decisions to the aaB alone but also being available with comments when required. Indeed, in order to guarantee the high level of integrity in the process the director has, if needed, left the room while the aaB has considered a particular application. still, since the aim is to select the very best, one could well argue that this matter should be left to the aaB.

then comes the crucial problem regarding the stage 2 meeting in Helsinki: exactly how are the best applicants selected by a group of seventeen researchers and how does the issue of interdisciplinarity

fare during this process? Here I will draw on my own experience both in the aaB and in the danish research council. let me put my reply in the form of a couple of recommendations.

First recommendation. all members of the board must have read all the applications, that is, the 50 or so in Helsinki. moreover, they must have read the full application, not just the one-page abstract (as was initially planned at the aaB). and on the basis of that, all the members must contribute to the discussion of all the applications.

I am happy to be able to report that this is in fact generally the case both in Helsinki and in denmark. It ensures that the general scientific criteria for quality are given their due. and the result will be – and the result is – that it is in fact the very best who are selected.

Second recommendation. members from ‘neighbouring’ academic disciplines must look sympathetically on applications from another discipline that venture to step into or draw on neighbouring disciplines. at

the same time, of course, members from neighbouring disciplines must also uphold the academic criteria that belong to their own discipline.

this is one of the problems associated with interdisciplinarity. there is a serious risk that when a group of researchers look at a bunch of applications in order to cut it down in size, every individual researcher will pay special attention to what is being said in any given application concerning their own particular discipline. for instance, suppose an applicant in religion (my own field) intends to make use of ideas from disciplines other than his or her own, for instance, from sociology, anthropology, cognitive science, gender studies and cultural studies – you name it. then such ‘trespassing’ will quite often be evaluated particularly severely by the sociologist, anthropologist, cognitive scientist, etc. fair enough! However, scholarly disciplines are there to be developed. and I can hardly emphasize strongly enough how much these other disciplines have in fact meant to the study of religion over

22 HelsInkI collegIum for adVanced studIes Hcas22 HelsInkI collegIum for adVanced studIes Hcas


Hcas felloWs talk aBout tHeIr Work

doNNa mccormackhcAs fellow since 2010 What is your research about?my current research focuses on the representation of organ donation and transplantation in selected postcolonial novels and films. I am particularly interested in how issues of national belonging are mediated through biotechnological imaginaries. I am concerned with not only the ethics of contemporary organ donation and transplantation, but also how this biomedical procedure has become a means of analysing, evoking and sometimes challenging nationalist rhetoric regarding citizenship, human rights and a healthy life. furthermore, this research focuses on the interrelation of health systems, biomedical technologies, colonial histories and neo-colonial market-based economies. the aims are therefore to explore how european colonial relations continue through and are transformed by the exchange and sale of human body parts and to examine the ways in which organ donation is bringing about a crisis in ethics where being open to the other is a literal violation of the self. finally, this research argues that since the advent of cyclosporine (the immunosuppressive drug that enabled the success of organ transplantation) in the 1970s one can witness an increased focus in literature and film on organ donation and transplantation. I suggest that this literary and filmic concern with organ exchange points to more profound socio-political anxieties regarding the violation and purported sanctity of the bodily and national border. to this extent, this research argues that literature and film

offer a unique insight into the intimate ties between nations and bodies, flesh and migration, and modes of belonging and biomedical communities.

Why this particular subject?to some extent, my research has consistently focused on how modes of belonging are formed through a sense of the flesh. my doctoral thesis was concerned with how histories may be conveyed through the body, especially the senses. I wanted to explore understandings of bodily borders and to suggest that this boundary is perhaps not quite as static or closed as we may often perceive or feel it to be. for my research, rethinking the meanings of the skin, flesh and the senses is one way of exploring the centrality of the definitive border to colonial and familial violence. It is also therefore one means of proposing the potential for less violent modes of coming together. similar to my doctoral thesis, which proposed a theory of embodied histories, my current research examines the interrelation of nationalist rhetoric and biotechnological discourse with a particular focus on the bodily violence of colonial histories. for me, the subject of organ donation and transplantation is of importance because, on the one hand, it demands we rethink existing health-care systems, economic and trade structures, and the notion and use of the human (especially in human rights discourse). on the other hand, organ exchange forces us to question the limits of our bodies, the value of life, whose life is

the last three decades or more. Here, then, I think sympathy is required. We should all constantly look for evidence of how the different disciplines may in fact cross-fertilize with one another – instead of trying to draw the boundaries as firmly as possible around one’s own discipline.

Here is a contrasting idea that in fact supports what I have just said. at the last Helsinki meeting of the aaB (it was my last one too) we ended our stay with a half day’s discussion (with important input coming from collegium fellows) of precisely the issue of interdisciplinarity. nobody of course disagreed that interdisciplinarity is important! on the other hand, I also came away from the meeting with a very strong sense of the solidity of each discipline’s boundaries. so, was that not a sign of failure? no, I have come to think that we should in fact honour these boundaries. they are not just haphazardly there. on the contrary, they help to ensure the solidity and the substance of any given piece of research. at the same time, however, we should also realize that it is only when solid, substantial disciplines open themselves up to insights from other disciplines that they may themselves develop. that, then, is a constant challenge, in the Helsinki collegium’s aaB as well as elsewhere.

and the result?finally the happy few are selected and come to Hcas to conduct their studies. Is the result the best one can hope for? does the system work?

If one looks at the list of new fellows each year, one may well say, “what a strange mixture!” yes, precisely. I firmly believe that this vindicates the whole process and is a mark of the sheer integrity of it. How could it be otherwise if what we are after are the very best? that, then, is my own firm conviction the system works – with those minor adjustments I have hinted at here and there in the above. may it continue to work.

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worth saving and how we are tied to others. organ donation and transplantation in film and literature is an exciting field of study because it invites the audience to imagine potential (often dystopian) futures and because it requires us to reflect on our own positions within these bodily, economic, historical and political exchanges.

What is the most common question asked about your topic?given the cultural focus of my research, many questions often relate to the specific texts. However, audience members are often interested in what happens to bodies that are plundered for their organs and the role health officials play in enabling the (illegal) sale of organs. the question I have been asked the most is: “How did you choose/decide on this topic?” as indicated above, the answer to this question always seems obvious in the disturbing and

evocative questions and issues raised by the representation of organ donation and transplantation in the context of european colonial expansion and in existing neo-colonial global exchanges.

Where would you hope your research would take you in the future?at the moment I am thoroughly enjoying learning from and working with scholars whose interests are organ donation and transplantation. In addition, I continue to enjoy the work I do with colleagues on caribbean and canadian literature and film, mainly on shani mootoo’s work. I would therefore like to continue working in a supported research environment, one that enables learning and ensures dialogue between disciplines. I hope that collaborative, interdisciplinary and international projects can feed into and maybe even question the current ways in

which health care is practised and common perceptions of certain bodies. research in literature and film (and the arts, in general) continues to expand and challenge existing curricula, bringing into existence new courses, paradigms and theories. that students continue to benefit from and potentially be excited by the creation of new ways of thinking about the world in which we live is critical to my own research. finally, I would hope that my research continues to allow me to ask questions about our existing unequal social structures. In so doing, I hope to be able to both question the move towards the non-funding of the arts at university level (especially in the u.k.) and the devaluing of cultural criticism in wider society and to encourage critical thinking and pleasure in pedagogical and research environments.

Donna McCormack

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aNdrEW NEWByhcAs fellow since 2010

What is your research about?my current research relates to the famines which affected finland and sweden in the 1850s and 1860s, though at present the greater emphasis is on the finnish side. While in Helsinki, I am looking especially at the way in which the British public reacted to these famines, and especially in a comparative context with the reactions to famine in Ireland during the 1840s. reactions to events in Ireland, you could say, were at best ‘mixed’. for various reasons, the British public seemed to have had a much more sympathetic and positive reaction to the finns (and swedes), and an exploration of these attitudes is at the core of the project.

Why this particular subject?the famine of 1868 was one of the first things I learned about finnish history, and of course coming from an Irish background it was fascinating that ‘other’ countries in europe experienced famines during the nineteenth century. there is an obvious comparative angle to be followed, not least because the great famine has completely dominated Irish historiography, and an examination of the finnish situation allows new light to be cast on a much-discussed topic. my first reaction was to ponder why Irish nationalist and republican discourse used the famine as a rallying point against

British rule – including more recently in the northern Ireland conflict – whereas the finnish historical and political reactions seemed much more ambivalent.

how did you come to do research on your topic?I’ve been working on these famines, on-and-off, for a decade now, but the results have mainly been used to inform my teaching, and this spell at the collegium for advanced studies is the first time I’ve been able to spend a dedicated and concerted period of time on the subject. during my phd at the university of edinburgh I was given the opportunity to teach a short course called “finland: the Ireland of the east”, which examined some common themes in finnish and Irish history: the unions of 1801 and 1809; famines; language and national identity; independence and civil wars; neutrality and the european union. I reprised this at the university of Helsinki in 2003, and we also ran a series of lectures on the subject between Helsinki and university college cork in 2003-4. I was able to use finnish-language sources quite soon after I first came to work at the university of Helsinki, on a cImo scholarship, in 1999. the swedish sources (in both finland and sweden) took a few more years but thankfully I’m also on top of these now!

Where would you hope your research would take you in the future?that’s a very good question! there is so much bound up in this topic that several directions are possible, and the trick might be to ensure that these are covered methodically rather than in a piecemeal manner. the whole broad subject of the decisions which lie behind national development funding, and private charitable donations, is extremely relevant to contemporary society. We recently had a seminar in Helsinki, organized by the nordWel centre of excellence, which looked at long-run perspectives on international welfare policy and poverty. the issues of the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor seem incredibly relevant again right now, not only in reactions to disasters in Haiti and pakistan, for example, but also within european states and debates over welfare systems. then, of course, there is the issue of how the famines fit into the context of nineteenth-century ethnic and national identities, and especially then of folk memory and the politicization of memory. other than this, there is the broader aspect of Irish-finnish comparative studies. I spoke on the finnish and swedish famines at liverpool university’s Institute for Irish studies in the spring, and we hope to develop a broader comparative project in

Andrew Newbyphot

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PENtti haddiNgtoNhcAs fellow since 2009

What is your research about?I’m either a linguist doing interaction analysis or an interaction analyst doing linguistics. that is I study how people use linguistic resources (syntax, prosody and so on) for “doing things” and for recognizing and understanding what others are doing in social interaction. In addition to this, I study how people use gestures, their body and other multimodal resources for producing and responding to actions and events in interaction. In my field (conversation analysis, multimodal interaction analysis, interactional linguistics), researchers use audio and video data that come from real-life and natural social situations. the approach is empirical, qualitative and micro-analytic. this means that the analyses focus, on the one hand, on the design of social actions and, on the other hand, how people respond to them and thereby display what they have understood the previous action to be doing. such a view provides a close view on how social actors themselves create, organize

and manage social interaction, moment-to-moment and step-by-step, and thereby create social life in collaboration with each other. currently I’m studying how people interact while they are on the move, for example, in cars and while they walk, how people do multiple things at the same time (i.e. multitask or organize multiple activities simultaneously or sequentially) and how people use objects for accomplishing actions. most recently I’ve studied and published on how people navigate together in cars and how they use and answer mobile phones in cars.

Why this particular subject?although social interaction has been studied for a long time, we generally know little about how people use linguistic and especially other multimodal resources for organizing and managing their everyday lives. research on interaction in cars seems to be particularly topical because there is very little research on the topic. In my

the coming years. there are some excellent graduate and undergraduate students coming through who are interested in this area, and it might be possible to develop a research group at some stage.

I’ve literally no idea at this stage where the research might take me in a geographical sense – the possibility of international collaboration is one of the delights of being an academic, and I’ve always tried to be open to working in different institutions and academic cultures. other than the famine work, I’ve been active in Helsinki in speaking on the idea of scotland as a nordic region, and I’m currently completing a history of nineteenth-century norway. I have other projects planned, not least a large project examining the notion of ‘norden’ or scandinavia as a historic region. I’m running a course on this theme in the autumn 2011. there has been some interesting work done in southern and eastern europe on this, and the centre for nordic studies in Helsinki would be an ideal place from which to run a parallel project. so, as you can see, almost everything is possible at this moment!

Andrew Newby

Pentti Haddington

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kathryN EdWardShcAs fellow since 2011

What is your research about?While I’m at the collegium I want to complete a manuscript for a book on the history of european belief in ghosts covering the period from the Black death to the enlightenment, that is, approximately 1300-1700. It’s actually the first volume of a 2-volume series that takes this subject to the early 20th century. for the first volume, I want to concentrate on how the religious and ideological turmoil of early modern europe affected the close bonds between the living and

the dead that had characterized late medieval society. In particular, I want to integrate folklore, theology and religious practice and compare ideas and practices across confessions and countries: how did 16th-century catholic spaniards treat apparitions of the dead as opposed to 16th-century lutheran germans? I specifically pose the question that way because, based on programmatic treatises by protestant intellectuals, protestants should have stopped believing in ghosts or, at least, equated all ghosts with demons. But

project and in collaboration with my colleagues we have been able to provide new research findings on for example how people multitask and use mobile phones in cars. such findings are interesting to an interdisciplinary audience and can have implications for studies interested in distractions whilst driving and traffic safety.

how did you come to do research on your topic?funnily, I can pinpoint exactly when I came up with the idea to study interaction in cars. In the autumn 2005 somebody crashed into my car. When I got out of the car to check on the driver in the other car, I saw that the driver was holding a mobile phone. later the same evening I asked myself: “What was she doing in the car?” and then realized that there was a very nice research topic here that had not yet been studied with the methodology I was using. six years later, one can say that these things take a long time!

Where would you hope your research would take you in the future?I consider myself lucky already. I’ve had the chance to have as a job something that I don’t really consider as work. It’s almost like a hobby for me and I’m still paid for doing it! I truly enjoy the creative, social and challenging side of this work. I’ve also been able to make many good friends in finland and around the world through research, which is something I value very much. If I can continue doing research in one way or the other after my period at the collegium, to publish my work and to travel and to collaborate with people, I would be happy.

Kathryn Edwards and her dog Ted.


many protestants continued discussing and treating revenants much like their catholic counterparts. such disjunctions between theory and practice suggested to me that studying human interactions with and beliefs about ghosts might be a fascinating and feasible way of studying many tensions within early modern society and thought.

Why this particular subject? actually I fell into this topic, something that I understand often happens to historians. While working on my first book, I was waiting for some rare books to be delivered and was skimming nearby shelves. When I saw a 17th century book without a title, I opened it to find that it bound a manuscript entitled The History of the Appearance of a Spirit, Dole, 1628. It grabbed me right away, especially when I was able to confirm the events it recounted in other local sources. I translated that manuscript and am finishing a microhistory based on the society and events it describes, particularly its protagonists, Huguette and leonarde. I blame Huguette and leonarde for setting me on the track of ghosts.

my training was in intellectual and cultural history and in annalist-inspired social history, so while I could tell you a lot about, for example, loyola’s Spiritual Exercises, I was astonished that early modern people believed in ghosts – or that Ignatius loyola had lived in a haunted house when he first moved to rome. once I thought about it, however, ghosts seemed a natural manifestation of the community of the living and the dead that was so much a part of my understanding of medieval and early modern europe. studying them appealed to my own penchant for broader, more synthetic histories but also gave me and my readers many specific and memorable stories to build on – really an ideal situation for a historian. given that I quickly found records of ghostly encounters from all over

europe, I also realized that, by working on ghosts, I could continue my interest in transnational topics, something I’d begun in my dissertation and first book on a 15th-century frontier. little did I know what I was getting into! although I originally wanted to be comprehensive, I’ve come to realize that, as extensive as my documentation is, I’m really providing a preliminary sketch for a history of the apparitions of the dead, albeit a 500plus-page sketch! right now I have accounts from well over 3,000 separate western and central european sources. ghosts appear in texts ranging from songs and plays to court cases and theological treatises. they give testimony in lawsuits, help young mothers with their children, and provide dinner conversation for lonely householders. While they can terrify, some people find them comforting.

What is the most common question asked about your topic?I get asked if I myself believe in ghosts all the time! to be honest, I find it amusing that I’m studying ghosts, considering that I’m the type of person that can’t watch horror movies or even the cheesey ghost hunting tV shows that are so popular now. I can’t say why that’s so, given that my attitude towards the actual existence of ghosts is quite agnostic: to paraphrase William shakespeare, I firmly believe that there are more things in heaven and earth than are encompassed by my philosophy, but I can’t say that I’ve had any encounters myself. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed, though, watching the response to this topic. While there are always some people that seem to feel ghosts are not a “real” or “legitimate” historical topic, more often the audience has been very receptive to both the intellectual history and folkloric aspects of my work. frequently, too, I have people come up to me after a talk; they wait until everyone else has left, then tell me their actual experience with a ghost. It’s too bad that people feel they have to

be so furtive, but I find that an interesting corroboration of the long-term effects of the changes I’m studying for early modern europe. then again, I’ve had some people who are quite forthright, too: one lady in the middle of a group of about twenty informed me how a ghost lived in their house, how she watched him walk down the hall, and what type of activities were most likely to trigger a visit!

Where would you hope your research would take you in the future?the sheer number of accounts of hauntings that I’ve found forced me to divide my study more clearly into an early modern and a modern volume, and my most immediate future project will be to complete the post-enlightenment part of this work. In particular, I find the post-1700 material fascinating in the way that science and technology become linked to the study of ghosts. think of the tV shows with the microphones and emf meters! Who determined that ghosts emitted electromagnetic frequencies? I also remain interested in the region that I first studied, the franche-comté, as a province that walks a fascinating religious, cultural, and political tightrope in the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries. aside from articles exploring the frontier nature of that province and aspects of the ghost project, I’ve thought about two other books I’d like to develop. the first is a microhistory of a calvinist minister in 17th-century mâcon who faces the prospect of living in a haunted house; the second is a book about the experience of “ordinary” people in the reformation presented through a series of vignettes where each chapter reconstructs a personal story.


NEW FELLOWS

William van andringa studied at the universities of toulouse and oxford. He was a member of the french school at rome in 2002-2003 and maître de conférences in roman History and archaeology at the university of picardie Jules-Verne. since 2007, he has been professor of roman History (History of ancient religions) at the university of charles-de-gaulle lille3, france. He is especially interested in the evolution of provincial religions in the western part of the roman empire. His works in this field include La Religion en Gaule romaine (2002), the edition of Archéologie des sanctuaires en Gaule romaine (2000), Sacrifices, marché de la viande et pratiques alimentaires dans les cités du monde romain (2007) as well as Archéologie du sacrifice animal en Gaule romaine (2008). another major interest is the religions in roman pompeii, Italy, as seen in Quotidien des dieux et des hommes : La vie religieuse dans les cités du Vésuve à l’époque romaine (2009) and the recent excavations conducted at the necropolis of porta nocera (2003-2007) and in the sanctuary of fortuna augusta (since 2008). In addition to his academic activities, he is also the director of the archaeological journal Gallia-Archéologie de la France Antique.

dmitry dubrovsky is associate professor in the programme of International relations, political science and Human rights at the department of liberal arts and science, st. petersburg state university. He is an expert in human rights in contemporary russia and the creator and director of the first human- rights education programme outside law school. He specializes in such topics as xenophobia, ultra-right nationalism, hate crime and hate speech, and the issue of freedom of conscience and speech. as an expert, he has been involved in a number of criminal cases concerned with hate groups. In 2007-2008 he was the galina starovoitova fellow on Human rights and conflict resolution at the kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson center in Washington, d.c. and in 2010 he was a visiting lecturer in International Human rights exchange programme at the university of Witwatersrand. He has authored a number of articles devoted to the issues of hate speech, racism, nationalism, and legal aspects concerning the limiting of freedom of speech.

kathryn a. Edwards is professor of History at the university of south carolina (usa) and is at the Helsinki collegium as a marie curie fellow from the european Institutes for advanced studies (eurIas). she has also held grants from the american Historical association, the national endowment for the Humanities and the folger shakespeare library among other u.s. and international institutions. she is the author of numerous articles and the author or editor of 3 books: Families and Frontiers: Re-creating Communities and Boundaries in the Early Modern Burgundies (2002), Witches, Werewolves, and Wandering Spirits: Folklore and Traditional Belief in Early Modern Europe (2002), and Leonarde’s Ghost: Popular Piety and “The Appearance of a Spirit” in 1628 (2008). While at the collegium, her main project will be writing her latest monograph, Living with Ghosts: The Dead in European Society from the Black Death to the Enlightenment where she will assess the roles, evolution, science, folklore and hermeneutics of beliefs about ghosts in central and western europe at a time when europe was undergoing the social, political and intellectual transitions so often seen as defining “the modern”. she also has a great collection of stories!

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Visa immonen is an archaeologist who specializes in the material culture of the historical period. His phd thesis, Golden Moments: Artefacts of Precious Metals as Products of Luxury Consumption in Finland c. 1200–1600 (2 vols.), was published in 2009. He was a visiting scholar at Villa karo, the finnish-african cultural centre in Benin in 2010, and at stanford university, california, in 2010–2011. In 2011 Immonen became an adjunct professor of archaeology at the university of turku. currently his research focuses on the concept of medievality in finnish and scandinavian medieval archaeology, understood both as a material process as well as a disciplinary construction. as part of this project, he is writing a biography of the state archaeologist Juhani rinne (1872–1950). Immonen has published on a variety of topics (e.g., colonialism, corporeality, cultural heritage, gender studies, the history of archaeology, and visual studies), and is a member of several research projects (e.g., ‘a portrait of art History: critical approaches to finnish art History and Historians’, department of art History, university Helsinki, and ‘the medieval relics of turku cathedral’, department of archaeology, university of turku).

mirka hintsanen received her phd in psychology in 2007 at the university of Helsinki with a faculty award for the best theses. she holds the title

of docent (corresponding to adjunct professorship) in personality, work and health psychology at the university of Helsinki. she has published on a variety of subjects. the main body of her research focuses on psychosocial factors, such as personality and stress, as predictors of health and illness. other important areas of study are the antecedents and outcomes of work stress, the development of personality and stress vulnerability, the role of genes in personality and health, and the role of temperament in a school context. Hintsanen has published in journals specializing in several fields of study, for example, in Atherosclerosis, Psychosomatic Medicine, The Journal of Affective Disorders, Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics, The European Journal of Personality, The British Journal of Educational Psychology, and Teaching and Teacher Education. she collaborates actively in finland and internationally with researchers, for instance, from estonia, sweden and the united states. during the autumn of 2011, she will be visiting the menzies research Institute at the university of tasmania in australia for research collaboration.

Elisabeth Engebretsen earned her phd in anthropology in 2008 from the london school of economics. Before coming to the collegium, she worked as a lecturer at the Institute for gender, sexuality and feminist studies at mcgill university, canada. Her research interests include inter alia queer china and transnational theories of gender, sexuality and kinship. Her current research focuses on ‘tongzhi’ (“queer”) communities and social activism in china and aims to go beyond analyzing queer identity and community as a counter-culture to chinese normativity and ‘the state’, by showing, rather, how the production of sexual normativity and non-normativity in post-millennial china intersects with gendered, classed, and spatial (rural/urban) subjectivities, which in turn are practised and conceived within narratives of national modernization vis-a-vis the global arena. elisabeth has published widely on her research in various journals and is currently working on a monograph entitled Same Sex, Different Women: An Ethnography of ‘Lesbian’ Being and Belonging in Urban China.

maijastina kahlos received her master’s degree in history and her phd in classics at the university of Helsinki. she has worked as a post-doctoral researcher and as a research fellow funded by the finnish academy. Her research interests broadly include late roman history, particularly the fourth and fifth century c.e., religions in the roman empire, the christianization of the empire, and roman everyday life. she has published the monographs Vettius Agorius Praetextatus: Senatorial Life in Between (2002), Debate and Dialogue: Christian and Pagan Cultures, c. 360-430 (2007) and Forbearance and Compulsion: Rhetoric of Tolerance and Intolerance in Late Antiquity (2009). she has edited a new volume The Faces of the Other: Religious Rivalry and Ethnic Encounters in the Later Roman world, which will be published in 2012. Her current research project (“rhetoric and realities in the late roman empire: Imperial and ecclesiastical discourses of control and religious dissenters in the years 300 to 450”) concerns relations between religious groups in the late roman empire.

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José Filipe Pereira da Silva received his phd in medieval philosophy at the university of porto (portugal) in 2009. He has held research and teaching positions in portugal and has more recently been a postdoctoral researcher at the university of Jyväskylä (finland). His research has focused on medieval natural philosophy and theories of perception, especially in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and he has published widely on these topics. currently he is interested in active perception and he is writing a monograph on the subject with an emphasis on the augustinian tradition and editing a volume on active perception from plato to kant.

alejandro lorite Escorihuela is associate professor at the school of global affairs and public policy of the american university in cairo, where he has taught international law, human rights, the laws of war and jurisprudence. He received his doctorate in law in 2004 from Harvard university, and has been a visiting lecturer at tufts university, Brandeis university, the université du Québec à montréal, the paris Institut de sciences politiques and the addis ababa Institute of Human rights. He has published articles on the laws of war, contemporary international jurisprudence, and human rights, and his current research interests focus on the political theory, or theories, of international environmental law.

rogier de langhe has a ph.d. in philosophy from ghent university. according to his own words, he is not so much interested in what the right answer to a given question is, but in where questions come from: “rather than focusing on scientific knowledge itself, my research focuses on the institutional structure that makes science possible. this point of view provides a fruitful perspective on problems that have received unsatisfactory treatment by the former view, evidenced for example by the discrepancy between accounts of scientific rationality offered by philosophers of science and actual scientific behaviour, or an inability to appreciate the intrinsically social nature of scientific work. thomas kuhn has been the most vocal advocate of this institutionalist paradigm in philosophy of science and it is my goal to articulate and develop this paradigm further, beyond the rationalism/constructivism debate, a debate which despite all controversy remained within the research agenda of classic philosophy of science.”

tarja knuuttila is a docent in theoretical philosophy (university of Helsinki) and she holds degrees in economics and business administration (msc, Helsinki school of economics) and in philosophy (ma and phd, university of Helsinki). the main themes of her work have been modelling and scientific representation, the methodology of economics, as well as the commodification of science. recently, she has focused on the philosophy of biology with a special emphasis on synthetic biology. apart from being situated in a practically orientated approach to the philosophy of science, her work is inspired by science and technology studies, and studies on distributed and embodied cognition. she has published on these themes in, for example, Biology and Philosophy; Erkenntnis, The European Journal for Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Science, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, International Studies in the Philosophy of Science, Science, Technology and Human Values, Science Studies, Semiotica, Forum: Qualitative Social Research, and in numerous edited books. she has co-authored a monograph in finnish on the commercialization of science (miettinen, reijo; tuunainen Juha, knuuttila, tarja & erika mattila: From Science to Product. Helsinki: 2006). she has also edited volumes in finnish on representation and umberto eco.

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mathias Persson holds a ph.d. in the history of science and ideas from uppsala university. His dissertation analyzes the images of swedish science and politics in the german review journal Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen in the latter half of the eighteenth century. He has also co-edited an anthology on representations of death in the media and popular culture and written a couple of articles on the swedish astronomer and author peter nilson, which deal with the interplay between religion, science and science fiction. early-modern travel and the quasi-religious character of the eugenic movement constitute other areas of interest and have likewise been explored in articles. during the academic year 2006−2007, persson was a graduate student at emory university in atlanta. after finishing his ph.d. training in 2009, he spent nine months at the centre for eighteenth century studies, at the university of york, where he worked on articles based on his dissertation. most recently, persson has carried out a research project that examines how frederick II’s enemies austria, france, and sweden were represented in a major prussian newspaper, Berlinische Privilegirte Zeitung, during the seven years’ War.

mikhail mikeshin studies the history of ideas in europe and russia in the 18th and 19th centuries. His main spheres of research interests are scottish philosophy in the enlightenment, the history of the russian nobility in these centuries and the history and methodology of sciences. He is the author or co-author of more than one hundred published works, including five monographs. He is a co-editor of The Philosophical Age almanac, the director of the st. petersburg center for the History of Ideas (http://ideashistory.org.ru). He has been the head of, or a collaborator in, about fifty research and conference projects supported by grants from national and international foundations, universities and academies. professor mikeshin taught at smith college (usa) and worked as a researcher at the Institute for the History of science and technology of the russian academy of sciences at st. petersburg state university (russia), the university of edinburgh (scotland), the aleksanteri Institute of the university of Helsinki (finland), the university of muenster (germany), the central european university (Budapest, Hungary) and some others. now he is also professor of philosophy at st. petersburg state mining university (russia).

Simon rabinovitch is assistant professor of History at Boston university. He received his ph.d. in comparative History from Brandeis university in 2007, and from 2007-2009 he was alexander grass postdoctoral associate in Jewish History at the university of florida.He has taught modern Jewish and european history at Boston university since 2009. His published articles examine Jewish politics in revolutionary russia, Jewish nationalist thought, and Jewish folkloristics and ethnography. He is currently editing two anthologies of Jewish thought and politics: Diaspora Nationalism in Modern Jewish Thought(Brandeis university press) and Modern Jewish Politics: Ideologies, Identities, and the Jewish Question (university of Wisconsin press). While in Helsinki, he will be working primarily on a monograph examining Jewish autonomy in late imperial and revolutionary russia.

kirill Postoutenko is currently an alexander von Humboldt fellow at the university of constance. In december 2011 he will assume the position of marie curie senior fellow at the university of london. He has taught at various institutions in russia, germany and the united states of america and worked as a research fellow in munich, new york, graz/Vienna, london and paris. His major research interests include the theory and history of poetry, the historical sociology of identity and the social history of twentieth-century europe. postoutenko has also published the following books: ‘Onegin’ Text in Russian Literature (1998, in russian), Totalitarian Communication: Hierarchies, Codes and Messages (editor, 2010) Asymmetrical Concepts after Reinhart Koselleck (editor, together with kay Junge),and Soviet Culture: Codes and Messages (2011).

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Sirpa Wrede is a university lecturer and docent in sociology at the university of Helsinki and a Helsinki collegium fellow at the Helsinki collegium for advanced studies. In addition to studying the impact of globalisation on professions and professional work as well as on ethnic relations in working life, her research areas include welfare state restructuring and international research on maternity care and midwifery. she has also written on the use of qualitative methods in international comparative research. Her current research examines the formation of welfare state expertise associated with the rapid increase of immigration to finland, focusing on professional projects and their implications. she is also the principal investigator and leader of the academy of finland project “the shaping of occupational subjectivities of migrant care Workers: a multi-sited analysis of glocalising elderly care” (2011-2015). she currently serves as coordinator for the european sociological association research network for the sociology of professions and as a Board member for the International sociological association research committee on the study of professional groups. In addition, she serves as a consulting editor for acta sociologica and as a member of the editorial team for professions and professionalism.

thomas Wallgren would like to understand how it is that we can send people to the moon but find it difficult to eradicate hunger. What can we do in today’s world regarding the idea that the search for truth and freedom belong together? He has cultivated his interest through investigations of topics in the philosophy of modernity, the philosophy of philosophy, ethics and epistemology. Wallgren reads Wittgenstein as an heir to socrates and as a theorist of democracy. He is interested in what critical theorists inspired by foucault, Habermas and others can learn from Wittgenstein’s later polyphonic and transformative notion of philosophy and in the relevance of gandhi’s conception of satyagraha in this context. currently he is interested in necessity in logic and ethics, the political interpretation of ethical universalism and about philosophical investigations as a practice of freedom. His main book is Transformative Philosophy: Socrates, Wittgenstein and the Democratic Spirit of Philosophy (lexington 2006). He is the director of the von Wright and Wittgenstein archives at the university of Helsinki and of the research project “a science of the soul?” (academy of finland, 2010-2013). Wallgren chairs the finnish refugee council, is an elected member of the city council in Helsinki and an activist in the World social forum process.

rein Vihalemm is currently professor emeritus and part-time professor of philosophy of science at the department of philosophy, university of tartu, estonia. He received his ph.d. in philosophy from the Institute of philosophy of the academy of sciences of the former ussr (moscow, 1969) and a diploma [m.sc.] in chemistry from the university of tartu, estonia (1963). He is the founder of the chair of philosophy of science at the university of tartu (1992), and one of the founding-members of the International society for the philosophy of chemistry (1997). His primary research interests have been in the field of the philosophy and methodology of science, especially of chemistry and its history. He has preferred the historical and practice-based approach in studying science and has also been interested in the history of the philosophy of science, especially in estonia. among his publications are three books in estonian and several edited volumes, including a volume (219) in the series Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science entitled Estonian Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science (dordrecht et al.: kluwer, 2001), and about 120 articles in several journals (including Foundations of Chemistry, Foundations of Science, The Journal for General Philosophy of Science) and other collections.

Pekka Sulkunen has been professor of sociology at the university of Helsinki since 2000, and is at the Helsinki collegium for advanced studies as kone foundation senior research fellow (2011-2014). His research interests are addictions, public sector research, power and social theory. His publications include The Urban Pub (1997 [1985]), The European New Middle Class (1992), Constructing the New Consumer Society (eds.) (1997), The Saturated Society (2009), Introduction to Sociology (several editions in finnish and swedish since 1987), and a number of other books in finnish, swedish, english and french. He has a total of 230 scientific publications, including 34 articles in refereed journals in english. He is a distinguished member of the finnish academy of science and letters, and received the Jellinek memorial award in 1997 for research in cultural and policy studies on alcohol. He is a member of the executive Board of the european sociological association, and a long-time president of the Westermarck society.

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pekka HämäläinenhcAs fellow in 2003-2005

I am a historian of the early and 19th century americas, specializing

in borderlands, native american, and environmental history. after finishing my ph.d. in 2001 (university of Helsinki), I had a post-doctoral fellowship at the clements center for southwest studies at the southern methodist university. In 2002, I got my first academic post as assistant professor of early american history at the texas a&m university. In 2004, while a fellow at Hcas, I accepted a position at the university of california at santa Barbara, where I became associate professor in 2008 and full professor in 2010. I spent the academic year 2009-10 as a fellow at the center for advanced study in the Behavioral sciences at stanford and 2010-11 at the Institute for advanced study in nantes. In 2012, I will start as the rhodes professor of american History at oxford university and a fellow of st. catherine’s college.

What impact did your research period at hcaS have on your research and/or career?Hcas played a crucial role in my career as it gave me the much-needed time to focus on my research and writing without extensive teaching obligations. during my two years at Hcas I was able to give my first book, The Comanche Empire, its proper shape.

Why did you choose to apply to hcaS?Hcas offered multi-year fellowships – quite a rarity in academia – and I was fortunate that my home institution granted me a two-year leave. Being a finn, I also appreciated

the opportunity to return to my home town for a little while. I have always enjoyed having one leg in north american and the other in european academia, and the two years spent at Hcas gave me the necessary distance and perspective to my very distinctly north american topic, perhaps adding some layers into my writing that might not have otherwise surfaced.

What added value did working in an interdisciplinary community bring to your research and/or career?I came to Hcas to work on a project that dealt with some basic questions of human

where are they now?

behaviour and historical change in contested cross-cultural settings. I wanted to provide a “total context” for power struggles in particular places in time, which necessitated that I looked at events and outcomes from multiple perspectives: economic, political, cultural and ecological; indigenous and colonial; small-scale and macro-scale. the interdisciplinary community at Hcas formed a powerful sounding board that was great for testing ideas.

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gereon Wolters hcAs fellow in 2009-2010

I studied philosophy and math-ematics at the universities of

Innsbruck (austria), kiel and tübingen, where I graduated in 1972. my research interests lie mainly in the field of history and philosophy of science and I have worked on topics like relativity theory and evolution. However, I have also written on several other topics such as nazi philosophy. my phd thesis (1977) was on the methodology of the eighteenth-century mathematician, physicist and philosopher Johann Heinrich lambert. my Habilitation thesis (1985) was on ernst mach and relativity theory (I showed among other things that texts in which mach apparently rejected relativity were forged). my whole career from phd to professor took place at the university of konstanz. I was offered a chair at another university soon after my Habilitation (1986) but I ended up applying successfully to another chair at konstanz. thus I was able to stay there, in a place which stands out both academically and scenically. apart from this I have been teaching courses in the philosophy of biology at the Zoological Institute of the university of Zurich (switzerland) for more than 25 years. the last of these courses is scheduled for next spring.

What impact did your research period at hcaS have on your research and/or career?considering the rather senior stage of my career, my stay at the Hcas could for obvious reasons not have any impact on it. However, my research on evolution and christianity was, indeed, enriched by coming into contact with the “cognitive science of religion”, strongly represented in finland. But I should add something else. Before my stay “finland” was something like a white spot on my landscape. sure, I had the good luck to know in person the great finnish philosopher georg Henrik von Wright (since 2003) and have always cherished the contacts with my excellent finnish colleagues, but “finland” was non-

anaïs marinhcAs fellow in 2008-2010

a political scientist by training, I specialised in international

relations and russian studies. With time, however, my research focus shifted to political geography, due to a special interest in the history and evolution of eastern european borderlands. this is reflected in my academic career. I received my ma in “the comparative study of political transition in post-communist europe” from sciences po paris in 1999. In 2006 I defended my ph.d. thesis, in which I analysed the “paradiplomatic” influence of st. petersburg on russia’s foreign policy in the 1990s. since russia’s “european” capital is, in many ways, a border city, I thought that my findings could open

existent in a sense. this has completely changed. after reading books on the history of finland, some travel and attending some talks at various finnish universities as well as cultural activities in Helsinki my wife and I have come to admire this country that has achieved great things with such a small population and sometimes under very adverse conditions.

Why did you choose to apply to hcaS?By chance. I had not even heard of the Hcas, when a friend of mine went there, and asked me: “Why don’t you apply, too?” Well, I thought this was a good question, and applied.

What added value did working in an interdisciplinary community bring to your research and/or career?the only added value to my research that I am aware of is getting to know the “cognitive science of religion”. But as somebody who has come to admire finland and the Hcas during the year spent there I might add a critical remark. In my view, which was shared by almost everyone from outside finland that I talked to, there is not much of an interdisciplinary community at the Hcas. this has to do with the fact that the necessary structures for establishing

it are largely missing. there is so much enthusiasm and commitment by our finnish friends, so much money is spent that in my view it would be desirable to optimize the social structures at the Hcas. What I see as a major shortcoming, might be seen differently by finnish members of the Hcas, but it does seem to be commonly held view amongst foreign visitors.


a way for comparative research on the international relations, and “bottom-up” influence of, other cities located near the eu’s eastern borders. this was the topic of my post-doctoral research at Hcas, which focused on cross-border urban networks across the so-called “schengen curtain”, from the Baltic to the Black sea. I broadened the analysis to encompass cases of institution building across the eu’s eastern borders, such as the emergence of euroregions with russian, ukrainian, Belarusian and moldovan participation. as a border scholar, I came to occupy a “niche” in studying trans-border water management networks and how ecotourism projects in particular help consolidate horizontal governance patterns in these borderlands. although there is room for theory building in this field of research (e.g. on “de-bordering”, re-territorialisation and europeanisation), it also contributes to the critical analysis of the eu’s cohesion and neighbourhood policies in central and eastern europe.

What impact did your research period at hcaS have on your research and/or career?the benefits of staying at Hcas were many. firstly, I enjoyed ideal working conditions at the collegium. apart from giving me access to the libraries of the university

of Helsinki, this intellectual setting was perfect for completing the writing of a scientific article (on street renaming as a temporal border-making practice) that I submitted to a peer-reviewed journal, Geopolitics. secondly, Hcas provided me with a prestigious academic affiliation, facilitating my inclusion in international research networks of border scholars, such as eastBordnet. my expertise also came to be acknowledged by practitioners of cross-border cooperation as the association of european Border regions (aeBr) asked me to contribute to its task force on external Borders. thanks to a rather generous travel budget from Hcas, I could attend academic conferences abroad and conduct field research in several eastern european euroregions (Slobozhanshchyna, Lower Danube, Neman). thirdly, I appreciated having a chance to lecture at the university of Helsinki on this specific topic. I designed an interdisciplinary seminar course on “neighbourhood relations across the eu’s eastern Borders” that I am now teaching at the aleksanteri Institute for the third year in a row. alongside the feedback I got from my Hcas colleagues, interacting with students from very diverse cultural backgrounds proved valuable to fuel my own reflection.

Why did you choose to apply to hcaS?In 2007 I qualified as assistant professor in france, but without a subsequent university post however. Back then the french university system was undergoing a radical reform and it was getting ever harder for a young doctor in the humanities to find a job. this is why I ended up teaching french in a private university for russian oligarchs’ children in switzerland! However my ambition lay elsewhere, so I started applying for academic jobs and post-doctoral research fellowships abroad. I heard about positions at the Helsinki collegium and thought I should give it a try. as I had already spent 3 years in st. petersburg during my doctoral studies, the prospect of facing similarly harsh winters in finland was not discouraging for me. moreover, I had already

made some contacts, both professional and personal, in Helsinki, tampere and Joensuu, so I was confident that my expatriation would run smoothly. and I was very happy to come and live only 400 km away from st. petersburg, a city so dear to my heart!

What added value did working in an interdisciplinary community bring to your research and/or career?apart from the advantages I already highlighted earlier, in my case this 2-year stay at the collegium had the greatest added value in terms of career promotion. By some unforeseen combination of happy circumstances, it helped me re-orient my career, both in terms of topic of interest, and type of professional activity. since January 2011, I have been in charge of the Belarus desk at the finnish Institute of International affairs, an internationally-recognised think tank producing expertise on, among other things, eu foreign policy. this new appointment owes a lot to the window of opportunity that organising a symposium on Belarus at Hcas (on 18-19 may 2009) opened for me. although I was already familiar with some aspects of Belarusian domestic politics – in september 2008 I took part in the osce’s monitoring mission of the (rigged) parliamentary elections in grodno – I had few contacts with experts from and on Belarus. putting together this symposium was an excellent way to gather together leading experts in Belarusian studies from several countries and disciplinary fields. It also gave me a chance to acquire experience in organising scientific-diplomatic events, including in terms of fund-raising. In the longer run, working at fIIa allows me to keep one foot in two worlds – finland and academia – while at the same time constituting a potential springboard to eu institutions in the future.

HelsInkI collegIum for adVanced studIes researcH felloWs 2011–2012

Address:fabianinkatu 24 (p.o. Box 4) 00014 university of Helsinki

tel. +358 (0) 9 191 24466 fax +358 (0) 9 191 24509 www.helsinki.fi/collegium

William van andringacharles antakikaren armstrongtatiana artemyevasusanne dahlgrendmitry dubrovskykathryn edwardselisabeth engebretsenValentina favapentti HaddingtonJin Haritawornsara Heinämaa mirka Hintsanenpaula Hohtimatti HäyryVisa Immonenmari Isoahomaijastina kahlos

dina khapaevasari kivistö (deputy director)tarja knuuttilanikolay koposovmia korpiolaanna kuisminanu lahtinenrogier de langhealejandro lorite escorihuelaantti matikkaladonna mccormackmikhail mikeshinVirpi mäkinenandrew newbyJosé filipe pereira da silvamathias perssonanssi peräkyläanne Birgitta pessi (deputy director)

tuulikki pietiläsami pihlström (director)kirill postoutenkosimon rabinovitchmikko salmelakatariina salmela-arosuvi salmenniemikoen stapelbroekpekka sulkunenpeter swirskiditlev tammrein VihalemmJani Vuolteenahothomas Wallgrenalan Wardesirpa Wrede

The Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies (HCAS) at a Glancen Established in 2001 as an independent institute within

the University of Helsinki

n Conducts high-level research in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Theology, Law, and Behavioral Sciences

n Employs about 40 Fellows for 1–3 years of whom a growing number come from abroad

n Invites annually a number of international scholars via various externally funded programmes

n Offers the Jane and Aatos Erkko Visiting Professorship in Studies on Contemporary Society

find out more at www.helsinki.fi/collegium

More information on the Collegium fellows and their research is available at: http://www.helsinki.fi/collegium/english/fellows

newsletterr volume 5 issue 1 2011 - helsingin yliopisto€¦ · interview with professor kari ......

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