The Nessling Foundation grants funding to speed up the sustainability transformation – Aalto researchers get grants

Keski-Korsu received 80,650 euro funding for her postdoctoral research at the Department of Art and Media, entitled Pathways from Art to Natural Rights, and Määttänen received 64,600 euros for her doctoral thesis at the Department of Design, entitled Closing Wardrobes’ Outflow: Redesigning a Post-Anxiety Wardrobe Relationship.

We pin many hopes on technology, but its role in the sustainability transformation also needs to be called into question. Among the funded projects are perspectives that, on the one hand, criticise and challenge prevailing understandings of technology and, on the other, explore how the sustainable use of technology can be harnessed as a driver of the sustainability transformation.

Ahola-Launonen and research group received 99,995 euros within the theme for the action project: Technology Myth Busters – A Research-Based Media Project on Constructive and Harmful Techno-Optimism in Sustainability Transitions.

A record number of applications

The Nessling Foundation’s general grant call received a record 586 applications this year. From these, 29 projects that aim to speed up the sustainability transformation were granted: 12 doctoral thesis projects, 10 postdoc projects and 7 science-based action projects. 

The funded projects address themes such as critical perspectives on technology and preparedness for risks arising from the ecological crisis, and also the transformative potential of changes in human behaviour and culture will be examined in more detail through the funded projects.

Sustainability transformation means a comprehensive process of societal change grounded in strong sustainability, which aims to align human activities with the ecological limits of the planet. It demands a far-reaching transformation that extends beyond people’s values and attitudes across all areas of life: to the structures and functions of culture and society such as the economy, governance, production and consumption.

“The sustainability transformation requires solutions, but also profound understanding of the phenomena, impacts and root causes that create and sustain unsustainable systems. That is why we also fund critically important basic research, which builds the knowledge base and societal foundations on which just solutions can emerge”, says The Nessling Foundation’s Science and Executive Director Iina Koskinen.

See the list of all funded projects