Futures Arena

Meri Kulmala, PhD in Sociology, docent in Russian and Eurasian Studies (University of Helsinki) and in Social and Public Policy (University of Eastern Finland) works as the director of the Helsinki Inequality Initiative (INEQ) at the University of Helsinki (UH), which is a research network in multidisciplinary inequality studies. She has led several research projects on child welfare and carried out peer-research with young care leavers transitioning into their independent living from different forms of foster care. Currently she is a principal researcher in two research projects: one focusing on young people, mental wellbeing and peer support in the context of social media, another on linguistic vulnerability in social work. Both projects involve elements of co-research. She is a founding member of the Finnish Co-research Network and an editor of the recently published, first Finnish speaking text book on co-research ‘Kanssatutkimus: Ihanteet ja käytännöt’ [Co-research: Ideals and Practices] by Tampere University Press (2023).

Outi Hietala has long worked in the field of rehabilitation and co-development of services. Her scientific background comes from sociology and social anthropology. In recent years, she has been particularly interested in the possibilities of combining formal and experiential expertice. And that's why she launched a co-research project for the Finnish Clubhouse Coalition. In the OSSI-project there were altogether seven co-researchers, who all worked in different positions during its different phases.

Inka Koskivirta has been a member of the Helsinki Clubhouse for approx. 12 years. She originally became a member because of the study coaching, which was offered there. At that time, she had already studied for a long time and was in the final phase, where the study routine has to be built by oneself. This can often be challenging, especially if a student has problems with mental health. And this is why she became interested in the OSSI-project and wanted to explore study coaching´s and Clubhouses´ meaning to studying members.

I work at Western Norway University of applied Sciences as Physiotherapy program leader. I am Senior lecturer, educational designer, physiotherapist and health professional. Trained as (sports & manual) physiotherapist, nowadays a professional with a scope upon learning, reasoning, humanities, education, internationalization and global Health. Health and education are two domains grounded in interaction, democracy, and partnership among all participants. Special interest in "Complexity, inclusivity, mindlines, constructionism and complementarity in learning.

Next to these roles, I am a rebel, activist, advocate, pioneer, father, partner, sport-coach, swimmer, cyclist and sailor. Love to explore and dive into the unknown, discover chaos, challenge the norm, fight for freedom, being drown in philosophy, watching movies, with a total passion for learning in all its aspects.

Michael Prilla is a full professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, where he heads the Interactive Systems work group. His work focuses on designing and evaluating individual and social human interactions with digital systems in application areas such as healthcare, education, industry, craftwork, and retail. Current areas of his work include human interaction with Augmented Reality and interaction of humans with robots and AI agents. For the latter, the work group investigates trust in robots, fairness of robots, and ways of communicating with robots. Prof. Prilla is vice-chair of the German SIG for human-computer interaction, and he has co-authored more than 150 publications in this area.

Ingolf Rascher is a social scientist and health economist. At Management for Health-INT (www.management4health.eu), his work focuses on research into digital transformation in the health and social economy. His work focuses on the design of human-technology interactions and human-robot interactions. As Speaker of the Institute Research and Practice Center Robotics and AI (www.robotik-pflege.de), he conducts research on success factors of application-oriented social robotics in hospitals and care facilities.

Ari-Pekka is Head of the Simulation Learning Environment at Metropolia UAS. He has made a significant contribution to the development of simulation learning environment, curriculum development of simulation and simulated learning in emergency care and in general at Metropolia. He is also an expert in the development and use of high fidelity simulators and their environments in learning and teaching. Ari-Pekka has developed in international cooperation the NESTLED- train the trainers’ course for SL and held those courses 36 times so far for teachers and Master´s degree students. He is qualified as a Firefighter-EMT and Emergency Nurse and has work experience in emergency care for over 20 years on the Helsinki Rescue Department.