TURNS organizes various activities, from local research and community actions to seed funding calls, PhD workshops, international conferences, and more. Our concepts include:
TURNS allocates seed funding for promising and impactful research initiatives as well as supports international researcher mobility. In 2025, TURNS seed funding is granted for the purposes of applying significant external funding; for formation and establishment of multidisciplinary partnerships or consortia; or for other ambitious and high-quality scientific initiatives. TURNS mobility funding is meant for the short-term visits to foreign universities and research institutes by the members of Tampere University research community. TURNS enrichment funding is granted for increasing the societal impact of research.
TURNS Thursdays are local activities and events organized together with the research community and various stakeholders. Events include TURNS urban walks and talks, TURNS research afternoons, TURNS expert panels, TURNS get-togethers, and much more. As the name suggests, TURNS Thursdays are organized on Thursdays, yet not always. If you wish to organize your own TURNS Thursday, please contact riina.lundman@tuni.fi to discuss about different opportunities.
TURNS supports innovative and transdisciplinary research activities with annual seed funding. As part of these seed projects, various events are organized by the funded initiatives, open to the whole TURNS community. The costs of seed events are included in the seed funding projects, and they are produced in collaboration between the funded initiative and TURNS.
TURNS visits other cities, towns and intriguing places to learn and discuss the topic of urban sustainability in different contexts. TURNS also supports researcher mobility and publishes travelogues from interesting field trips in the Tampere Urban Research Perspectives blog.
TURNS takes part in organizing international research conferences and congresses such as Re-City 2025, INURA 2025, and GPEAN/WPSC 2026, as well as national and local seminars and research days.
TURNS organizes annual international PhD workshops and summer schools with key speakers from the fields of urban studies, planning, and transitions research. In addition, TURNS holds free summer writing camps meant for Tampere University’s PhD researchers whose dissertations are related to urban sustainability.