Special Guest event with Dr. Benjamin Hofmann: Navigating the Anthropocene with Science!? – Roles of Researchers and Barriers to Evidence Use in Policy and Practice
Event information
Time
Tue 03.06.2025 08:45 - 10:00
Venue location
Maisemasali, Main Libarary, Linnnanmaa campus, University of Oulu
Location
Welcome to listen to
Hofmann's interdisciplinary talk Navigating the Anthropocene with Science!? – Roles of Researchers and Barriers to Evidence Use in Policy and Practice discusses diverse roles of researchers and the barriers they encounter when trying to bring evidence into policy and practice. Join the engaging discussion over a cup of coffee and light breakfast which will be served from 8.45.
Date & Time: June 3, 8.45-10.00
Location: Maisemasali, Main library 3rd floor, University of Oulu
Abstract of the talk
In the Anthropocene, society faces environmental crises, such as climate change, biodiversity loss, and chemical pollution. Evidence-informed decision-making is widely held to be crucial for tackling these problems and for fostering sustainability. The talk asks what this claim means for the functions science performs, the roles that researchers adopt, and the barriers they encounter when trying to bring evidence into policy and practice. Guided by these questions, the talk develops three arguments connecting literature on sustainable transformation, evidence-informed policymaking, and environmental politics.
First, scientific work is not limited to charting change but can also bridge perspectives and support wayfinding in society. Second, research projects pursuing all of these objectives exhibit a new diversity of roles among involved researchers, which comes with distinct opportunities and challenges. Third, while more researchers engage with policy and practice, barriers to evidence use arise from different motivations of stakeholders ranging from truth-seekers to sense-makers to benefit-maximizers.
The talk illustrates these arguments with empirical examples from qualitative political science, inter- and transdisciplinary research, and art-science collaboration covering different environmental problems (climate change, pesticide pollution, and shipping impacts) in Switzerland and Northern Europe. It concludes with a facilitated discussion on barriers to evidence use in policy and practice as seen by the participants and on ways forward in science-society relations that can strengthen resilience in an era of human-made environmental changes.
Additional information:
Tapio Nykänen, Associate Professor
Tapio.Nykanen@oulu.fi
