Dear colleagues and friends,
We would like to thank all our fellow urban researchers, collaborators, and the participants of various TURNS events for making the second year of Tampere Urban Research Network (TURNS) such a success. The year 2025 was once again rich in dialogue, collaboration, and inspiration. You can revisit the events we organized throughout the year here: TURNS Activities Calendar 2025
In 2025, we focused on strengthening the visibility and international reach of TURNS. We hosted several international gatherings, including the week-long Radical Care for the City event and the related Re-City Conference 2025. The second edition of our International PhD School 2025: Urban Planning for Discontinuity and Radical Transformation was a highlight of the summer. In addition, TURNS proudly hosted the INURA 2025 Conference, with the strong title of “In War be Fight, in Peace we Build”.
Although the international events took up a large part of our time, we were able to organize many local seminars and get-togethers that brought together members of our multidisciplinary Tampere urban research community and our various partners. Examples of such events included e.g. the symposium on Urban Resilience through AI, Tampere Urban Research Afternoon, TURNS Spring Party, and a collaboration with Tampere Film Festival. The annual Tampere Urban Thesis Market was once again very popular, attracting hundreds of students to the main lobby of Tampere University’s Main Building to find ideas for their theses.
In 2025, we continued to provide TURNS funding for urban researchers at Tampere University, supporting 6 seed initiatives, 6 mobility initiatives, and 6 research enrichment initiatives. You can find more numbers and figures of TURNS year 2025 here: TURNS year 2025 in numbers.
This year, we expanded the TURNS research enrichment funding to include also art-science collaborations and the use of creative methods. Thus, results of some initiatives were exhibited e.g. at Mänttä Art Festival (Arkkitehtuurin opettajien ja alumnien teoksia Mäntän kuvataideviikoilla) and some choreographed by Paikantujat dancers (Investigating the (work)home). Moreover, we were able to start a collaboration with the Rohee Street Magazine that will publish several articles written by Tampere University urban researchers under the series Kaupunkitutkijan katse in 2025-2026.
We were happy to see some earlier TURNS seed funding initiatives from 2024 to grow into larger projects. We are delighted to celebrate Jonathon Taylor’s EU funding success with the ATMOPOLIS project as well as Elina Alatalo’s Finnish Cultural Foundation grant for her collaboration with dancers. Furthermore, a joint effort between Tampere University’s research platforms TURNS, DigiSus and CNESS, Tampere University of Applied Sciences, City of Tampere, EcoFellows, and MDI led to EU funding and the launch of the new URBAN PROSUMERS project, headed by Pauliina Lehtonen.
Our Tampere Urban Research Perspectives blog remained active throughout the year. Feel free to explore the posts here: Tampere Urban Research Perspectives. We also took part in editing a special issue of the e-journal Aukio, with the topic of Care-full Cities (in Finnish). Remember to follow TURNS Research Platform on LinkedIn, too!
We have also advanced TURNS’ strategy, which will be published in early 2026. As mentioned in our previous TURNS Winter Letter 2025-26, we will now take a short break from TURNS events and focus on planning of the future.
We wish you all a peaceful holiday season and look forward to seeing you again in 2026!
Warm regards,
TURNS Team