The centre investigates question of democracy in contemporary societies. Its projects address this topic from different perspectives, deploying a variety of methodological approaches, while sharing the common framework of pragmatistically oriented theorising of the social.
Research focus and goals
The centre's research addresses the large-scale wicked problems societies and, eventually, the humanity outright are facing, including economic, social, environmental, and political inequality, as well as interlinked threats to democracy and equity-based governance.
The centre consists of a methodologically diverse, interdisciplinary group of researchers who study, in a cross-secting fashion, the dimensions, levels, and aspects of social life and societal structures that form the elements of democracy.
The key topics in the centres research are:
- The everyday, mundane practices in which democracy takes place, evolves, and becomes defined.
- The intertwinement of political participation and the polarization processes in civil societies due to increasing, intersecting inequalities and marginalization.
- The online and offline engagements shaping political agency and introducing novel forms of publicizing concerns and arguing for them.
- The processes emerging from citizenship practices shaping the understanding of political cultures, and in particular the engagement in political (and proto- anti- and de-political) activities of young people.
The centre's ongoing projects are:
- Imagi(ni)ng Democracy. Young Europeans Becoming Citizens by Visual Participation (ImagiDem) (ERC Starting Grant 2019-2024).
- Totaalidemokratia. Parademokraattinen järjestelmä ja osallistumisen kulttuuriset työkalut 2010-luvun Suomessa. (Koneen Foundation 2019-2022)
- Feeling Biases and Bubbles. Deep Stories -section. BIBU - Biases and Bubbles in Participation. (Strategic Research Council 2017-2021)
- Young Citizens in the Age of Polarization. Ethnographic and Big Data Based Study of Engagement, Participation, and Marginalization in 2010s Finland (YCAP) (Academy of Finland 2016-2020)
- Citizens in the making: Ethnography and Big Data on Youth Engagement, Participation and Marginalization in 2010s Finland (Kone Foundation 2014-2018)
Other members
Eeva Luhtakallio, Georg Boldt, Veikko Eranti, Maija Jokela, Lotta Junnilainen, Taina Meriluoto, Roosa Tuukkanen, Tülay Y1lmaz, Tuukka Ylä-Anttila.
Contact persons
Eeva Luhtakallio
Assistant Professor
eeva.luhtakallio [at] uta.fi
+358 40 503 1573
Taina Meriluoto
Post-Doctoral Researcher / Coordinator of the ImagiDem -project
taina.meriluoto [at] uta.fi
+358 44 523 9839