Hakkarainen, Viola

Hakkarainen, Viola

Research Fellow

LUKE Natural Resources Institute, Finland

Research interest

Viola’s research interests include co-creation of knowledge and sustainability transformations, which she is going to explore in relation to nature-based culture as an ESR in the RECOMS.

Biography

Viola holds a master’s degree in Social-ecological resilience for sustainable development from Stockholm Resilience Centre (Stockholm University). During the transdisciplinary master’s programme, she became interested in links between science and society, scientific knowledge and action. This interest took her to a journey to study knowledge exchange between external researchers and local stakeholders in small-scale fisheries in Zanzibar, Tanzania, as a case study for her thesis. Viola has a background in social sciences as her bachelor’s degree in Global development at Stockholm University combined political science, social anthropology, economic history and human geography with a focus on development. Viola specialised in human geography to gain better understanding about human-environmental interactions. Multi- and transdisciplinary backgrounds have given Viola methodical flexibility, yet she is most familiar working with qualitative methods.

Project summary

Inclusion of different types of knowledges is recognized important for environmental governance while local knowledges are considered central for community resourcefulness and resilience. Understanding different types of knowledge processes, such as creating, using and sharing knowledge, requires investigating the informal and formal rules and conventions that shape these processes referred as knowledge governance. This research adopts a novel approach to community resourcefulness through exploring cases in which knowledge processes intertwine with nature and culture at different scales. By unpacking knowledge governance the research sheds light on institutional arrangements which can affect communities’ capacity for resourceful self- organization. The case studies take place in the context of Kvarken archipelago in Finland and High Coast Sweden that together form a UNESCO natural World Heritage site. First, the study explores different actors’ perceptions on how local knowledge is constructed and explores dimensions of these knowledges in relation to nature and culture in the World Heritage site. Secondly, the study aims at understanding how knowledge and values interplay in nature-based activities in different actors’ knowledge claims. Thirdly, the study explores the value-rules-knowledge relations of environmental the decision-making context and how they are perceived by local stakeholders in relation to community resourcefulness.