About

Spatial Socialization and Environmental Citizenship Research Collective (SPECS) is an interdisciplinary research environment, bringing together scholars who share an interest in the following and related approaches and topics. The internationally networked group is connected with other research groups in Tampere University, with joint interest on spatial politics, environmental concerns, and sustainability. SPECS scholars also engage in multi-scalar interaction with stakeholders and the civil society.

Research themes

A woman next to a pile of felled trees. In the bottom of one tree is a text "energy".

  • Contextual subject formation and the development of human agency, in a relational world characterized by transnational and translocal connections and disruptions
  • Socio-culturally mediated environmental relations as constitutive of human agency, including natural and cultural environmental relations
  • Proactive and responsive environmental agency as embedded in socio-culturally mediated environmental relations and conditioned by the political society
  • Spatial socialization and environmental agency in the time of climate change and biodiversity loss
  • Lived environmental citizenship including the dimensions of citizen status, practices of citizenship, and acts of citizenship
  • Relational scalar dimensions of environmental citizenship, ranging from the scale of the body to domestic, local, city-regional, national, Nordic, European, and global dimensions
  • Shared responsibilities for the environment between public, private and third sector actors and citizens as collectives and individuals
  • Environmental citizenship beyond individualistic consumerism, acknowledging the multiple roles of citizens in the society (e.g. in labor, education, care institutions, family, health and welfare services, traffic, housing, land ownership, NGOs and grassroots organizations, activism, leisure activities, social media networks and communities, tourism)
  • Climate change and biodiversity loss with reference to global mobility, forced migration, asylum seeking, and refugeeness
  • Environmental governance vis-à-vis humanitarian bordering
  • Forrest as a critical case of ecological, economic, social, and cultural sustainability

A group of young people from the CCC-CATAPULT project having a picnic in the Tampere city center park.