Lauri Siisiäinen
Ei aktiivista nimitystä
Tutkimuskuvaus
I take it as somewhat self-evident that University, with its various tasks and functions, is always embedded in a broader socio-cultural and historical milieu. Hence, it is crucial to reflect also in a self-critical manner on the position of research and teaching in this milieu, including their various effects and impacts. In my view, this impact should be understood as the influence proper to academic research and knowledge, stemming from their unique character. This impact cannot be reduced to direct economic utility. Nor can it be assessed solely from the governmental or administrative perspective of policy-making and implementation. This notion of impact acknowledges the perspective of ordinary citizens and their everyday lives, as well as the angle of various collective actors, such as NGOs, not only that of governmental institutions and private business. To put it very concisely, as I see it, the social as well as cultural impact of research comprises its manner of influencing our possibilities, capacities, and resources of thinking and acting. Published research also theoretical research can provide intellectual tools, by means of which citizens themselves can disclose the often unnoticed limits, exclusions, marginalizations, and hierarchies that organize and condition their everyday field of choices. When such tacit rules and structures are made visible, they also become amenable to questioning and transformation. It has been a pleasure to observe that my research has also, to some extent, been read and applied as a critical tool outside Academia.