SUSTAINABILITY WEEKS 2014
- Finnish-Japanese Joint Symposium
Innovation and Well-being through Multidisciplinary Dialogue
5th (Wed), 6th (Thu) and 7th (Fri) November, 2014
The University of Lapland is pleased to announce that it will be hosting the Finnish-Japanese Joint Symposium for this year’s Sustainability Weeks. The event will serve as a continuation to a series of symposia that started already in 2005 with the cooperation in environmental research between several Finnish universities and Hokkaido University. In the latest years, this long-standing annual symposium has been held either in Hokkaido, Japan or in Oulu or in Rovaniemi, Finland
The event series began with environmental research including, among others, cryosphere, boreal forests, land-use, and human-environment relations. This year the focus will be on health and well-being, where the aim is to bring out new innovations through multidisciplinary dialogue and, more specifically, through the collaboration of arts and sciences. As the leading authority on service design in Finland, the University of Lapland is eager to help bring researchers and students from various fields together to tackle some of the current problems in healthcare that are shared by both Japan and the Nordic countries.
The three day event will be divided into workshops on the first two days and a conference on the last. The main participating universities will all host their own workshop with pre-coordinated topics and the two days will be reserved for exchanging ideas and, through that, innovating new approaches to the topics at hand. The fruits of these workshops will then be presented to the public through a panel discussion on the third day along with keynote speeches from invited lecturers. The aim of the event is not only to maintain the strong collaborative ties between Finland and Japan, but also to innovate new and tangible ways the two countries can benefit from each other’s ideas and perspective as with shared interests also strength should be shared.
Workshops topics (detailed descriptions to be confirmed)
Theme 1: Health Problems in an Aging Society with a Harsh Winter Climate
Theme 2: Designing ethical tourism in the Arctic
Theme 3: Service Design Methods in Designing Digital Healthcare Concepts
Theme 4: Community Design through Tourism – Challenges of Community Based Heritage and Tourism Management
Theme 5: Designing and Planning the Built Environment for Human Wellbeing – Challenges of Shrinkage and Growth in the Northern Regions
Theme 6: Architecture and Home Healthcare in Northern Regions