{"id":4575,"date":"2025-11-06T20:18:35","date_gmt":"2025-11-06T18:18:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/conference\/?page_id=4575"},"modified":"2026-01-13T00:22:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T22:22:10","slug":"working-group-3-intergenerational-hope-in-sparsely-populated-regions","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/conference\/working-groups\/working-group-3-intergenerational-hope-in-sparsely-populated-regions","title":{"rendered":"Working Group  3: Intergenerational Hope in Sparsely Populated Regions"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>Academic panel<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><strong>Coordinators: <\/strong><\/div>\n<ul>\n<li>Tapio Nyk\u00e4nen <em>(Associate Professor, Resistance, Resilience &amp; Reconciliation, University of Oulu) &#8211; <\/em><a href=\"mailto:tapio.nykanen@oulu.fi\">tapio.nykanen@oulu.fi<\/a><\/li>\n<li>Helena Ristaniemi <em>(Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Oulu)<\/em> &#8211; <a href=\"mailto:helena.ristaniemi@oulu.fi\">helena.ristaniemi@oulu.fi<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div>Global crises\u2014such as climate change, rising geopolitical tensions, and biodiversity loss\u2014can become causally entangled across multiple global systems, generating emergent harms that exceed the sum of their individual parts and produce vulnerabilities across both global and local scales (Lawrence et al. 2024).<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>For many sparsely populated regions, these global dynamics take on a distinctive form: they converge with demographic decline, population aging, out-migration, and the withdrawal of services, creating what might be called a polycrisis of sparsely populated regions. This localized polycrisis intertwines global pressures with the erosion of everyday infrastructures of governance, livelihood, and care.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>At the same time, sparsely populated landscapes can hold deep cultural and personal significance for their inhabitants: they remain places where belonging, creativity, and renewal are possible. In many cases, a sparsely populated region is also a cultural environment in its own right, providing a basis for positive affects such as joyfulness, rootedness, and playfulness, as well as for alternative lifestyles and resistance. Even as the polycrisis reshapes local environments, possibilities for human agency do not necessarily disappear.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>We invite papers that explore hope and affective agency within the polycrisis of sparsely populated regions. We especially encourage empirically grounded analyses that address how people navigate specific combinations of challenges and opportunities in their everyday lives. We particularly welcome contributions drawing on local and Indigenous knowledge perspectives, as well as comparative work foregrounding youth and intergenerational relations.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>While the notion of polycrisis can be seen as a general and potentially depoliticizing frame\u2014treating crises as given\u2014we argue that it retains heuristic value by illuminating how political, economic, ecological, and social disruptions intersect and accumulate. However, we equally welcome contributions that critically interrogate polycrisis thinking and propose alternative ways of approaching intergenerational challenges related to climate change, inequality, or demographic transformation. This Working Group will take place in the form of paper presentations (20 minutes each), and the session will be organized onsite.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<h3>Accepted presentations<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Co-designing intergenerational learning to foster young people\u2019s inclusion in sustainability transformations<\/em> (Tiina J\u00e4\u00e4skel\u00e4inen, Amaniel Athuman, Irmeli Mustalahti, Ubaldus Tumaini)<\/li>\n<li><em>Silent Suffering: The Impact of Climate Change on Early Marriages, Girls\u2019 Education and Well-being in Rural Sindh, Pakistan. A study aligned with SDG 3 (Good Healt and Well-being), SDG 4 (Quality Education), SDG 5 (Gender Equality) and SDG 13 (Climate Action)<\/em>\u00a0(Sonia Darshan)<\/li>\n<li><em>Co-constructed everyday lives of women and snowmobiles in S\u00e1pmi<\/em> (Helena Ristaniemi, Tapio Nyk\u00e4nen)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<div><strong>Registration is now open from 12 January to 15 February 2026.\u00a0<\/strong><br \/>\nThe detailed timetable will be published later.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Academic panel Coordinators: Tapio Nyk\u00e4nen (Associate Professor, Resistance, Resilience &amp; Reconciliation, University of Oulu) &#8211; tapio.nykanen@oulu.fi Helena Ristaniemi (Postdoctoral Researcher, University of Oulu) &#8211; helena.ristaniemi@oulu.fi Global crises\u2014such as climate change, rising geopolitical tensions, and biodiversity loss\u2014can become causally entangled across multiple global systems, generating emergent harms that exceed the sum of their individual parts and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"parent":3437,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4575"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4575"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4575\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4841,"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/4575\/revisions\/4841"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/3437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kehitystutkimus.fi\/conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}