FERA Conference 2025
Keynote speakers
- Professor Gert Biesta, the Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy, Maynooth University, Ireland
- Professor Arto O. Salonen, University of Eastern Finland
- Professor Reetta Toivonen, University of Helsinki
Professor Gert Biesta
The Centre for Public Education and Pedagogy, Maynooth University, Ireland
Title: A sustainable future for education itself?
Gert Biesta is Professor of Public Education in the Centre for Public Education and pedagogy at Maynooth University, Ireland, and Professor of Educational Theory and Pedagogy in the Moray House School of Education and Sport, University of Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Since 2023 he is a member of the Education Council of the Netherlands, which is the advisory body of the Dutch government and parliament on educational matters. His work focuses on the theory of education and the philosophy of educational and social research, with a particular interest in teaching, teacher education, citizenship education, arts education, religious education, and education policy. Recent books include World-Centred Education: A View for the Present (Routledge 2021) and The new publicness of education. Democratic possibilities after the critique of neo-liberalism (co-edited with Carl Anders Säfström, Routledge 2023). So far, his work has appeared in 22 different languages.
Professor Arto O. Salonen
Professor, Department of Social Sciences, Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies, University of Eastern Finland
Title: Planetaarinen sivistyskäsitys ratkaisuna kriisiytyvän ajan haasteisiin
Professor Arto O. Salonen's expertise is related to sustainable well-being. His approach is interdisciplinary and future-oriented. Salonen works at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Business Studies at the University of Eastern Finland in the field of social pedagogy. He is a member of the sustainability panel appointed by the Finnish government. Salonen is an adjunct professor of education at the Teacher Education Department of the University of Helsinki and an adjunct professor of sustainable development at the National Defence University in the Department of Leadership and Military Pedagogy. Salonen has years of work experience in teaching tasks both in general education and in the university of applied sciences sector.
He leads the SISU consortium and Sustainability Transformations Doctoral Education Pilot. He is also a member of the RESOURCE Research Community (Sustainable Resource Society: Circular Economy, Energy and Raw Materials). He has a membership in the Finnish Expert Panel for Sustainable Development which brings science closer to society.
Professor Reetta Toivanen
Professor of Sustainability Science at HELSUS and the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki, Finland
Title: Alkuperäiskansat ja globaalit tavoitteet: Näkökulmia kestävyyshaasteiden ratkaisemiseen arktisella alueella
Reetta Toivanen (PhD 2000, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin) is a Professor of Sustainability Science at HELSUS and the Department of Cultures at the University of Helsinki, Finland, with a specific focus on Indigenous peoples. She is also a docent in social and cultural anthropology.
She serves as the vice-director of the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity, and the European Narratives (EuroStorie) and is the Principal Investigator of the subproject Migration and the Narratives of Europe as an “Area of Freedom, Security and Justice” (2018–2025), funded by the Research Council of Finland.
In addition, she is a non-resident visiting fellow at the European Center for Minority Issues (ECMI) and a non-resident Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. She is a member of the Finnish Government Expert Panel on Sustainability and recently joined the Executive Body of the International Commission on Legal Pluralism.
Since 2022, she has been a member of the esteemed Finnish Society of Science and Letters, and in 2024, she became the chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland.
