About me
I study the use of knowledge in climate governance in cities: how city organisations, their experts and politicians, make do with the kinds of knowledge they have to effect climate action. With two Academy of Finland projects, WISE and LONGRISK (in Finnish only) , I design and conduct crisis policymaking exercises with cities in Finland. The exercises invite politicians and experts to consider the long-term repercussions of climate heating and to match them with equally long-term policies and with foresight for their uncertain consequences. I analyse in them the use of ‘as if’ realities – notions of what’s real, present, and ‘not really real or present yet but somehow relevant still’ – in efforts to know how to govern distant and contingent futures. Further, I’m interested how the use of Bayesian probability modelling (Bayesian Networks) in scenario-based crisis exercises invokes actionable insight for governing, of not only calculable or purely qualitative worth and preference, but also both of them considered and resolved together somehow, ‘qualculated’.
Research fields
Sociology, Science and Technology Studies (STS)
Selected publications
Virtanen, M. J., Reinekoski, T., Lahikainen, L., & Lehtonen, T.-K. (2022). Travels and Trials of Climate Knowledge in Finnish Municipalities. Science & Technology Studies, 35(1), 2–20. https://doi.org/10.23987/sts.97519
https://sciencetechnologystudies.journal.fi/article/view/97519