My research is situated in the field of design for sustainability transitions and transformations. I am interested in how new ways of designing, and new agencies of design, emerge when societies attempt to transform socio-ecological-technological systems towards more just and sustainable futures. A central concern in my work is how design can help people, organisations, communities and institutions imagine, negotiate and enact futures that are not yet fully present, but that can begin to take shape through situated, collaborative and experimental practices.

Field-Stations for the Future resonates strongly with this orientation, and with the work of my research group, NODUS Sustainable Design Research Group at Aalto University. In NODUS, we study sustainability transformations through transdisciplinary and co-creative approaches, bringing together design research, sustainability science, transitions studies and futures inquiry. Across our work, we are interested in how change becomes possible not only through policies, technologies or strategies, but also through lived practices, infrastructures, relationships, learning processes and forms of collective agency.

For me, the value of field-stations lies especially in their capacity to make regenerative futures tangible and situated. They are not only sites where new ideas can be tested, but also places where different actors can learn how to relate differently to one another, to institutions, to material systems, and to the more-than-human world. In this sense, they can function as civic infrastructures for experimentation: spaces where communities, researchers, students, public actors, businesses and civil society can encounter future possibilities in practice, rather than only as abstract visions.