Wave Riders are here!

Last autumn was active time at the University of Turku in terms of gathering together researchers interested in marine and maritime issues university-wide. This was related to the strategy of the university: in the new strategy sea and maritime issues are recognized as one of the six main thematic areas of research at the Turku University.

The university-wide collaboration on the topic initiated cooperation among the humanists at UTU previously weakly informed by the marine research that was done at the Faculty of humanities. We met several times and compiled together e.g. an impressive list of our publications related to the topic. We realized that we share a common deep interest in the topic, and also a desire to advance the development of this particular research area within our faculty and our university across humanistic and social scientific disciplines. Thus, in February we established a research (and teaching) laboratory Wave Riders (AHA–Aallonharjalle in Finnish), a community that brings together researchers from the humanities and social sciences at the University of Turku specializing in the study of marine and other water systems. The introduction of AHA on the website (see aallonharjalle.wordpress.com) says the following: “Its (AHA’s) goal is to gather together researchers whose research is related to the maritime and shipping-thematic collaboration in the University of Turku’s new strategy.)

Last Friday we held a first seminar on the topic. The seminar (which was held in Finnish) was very successful and gained a lot of interest even among the local media. Now we have a proper overview of what kind of research is being done here and in what kind of issues people share an interest.The next phase of our work is to start planning a joint research project and a funding application. There are a great number of ideas for new projects, let’s see which of them realise…