Welcome back to the latest instalment of “Let’s Discover the Project’s Consortium”, a blog series where we introduce each partner in ToBe.
Today, we have the pleasure to present the Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT). State owned, VTT is one of Europe’s leading research institutions with the goal of providing scientific and technological insights in the turning of the world’s current challenges into sustainable growth, jobs and wellbeing. Representing VTT, Nina Rilla kindly answered a few questions on VTT’s and her outlook for the next three years.
When asked about the linkage between VTT and Sustainable Wellbeing, Nina stated that, while the topic is relatively new for VTT, it aligns with the Center’s core activities, which focus on clean and green technologies. “Traditionally sustainability has been approached from environmental and economic perspectives, but today VTT’s involvement more and more in social sustainability topics such as inclusivity and gender equality aspects brings us closer to comprehensive understanding of sustainability”, Nina added.
In ToBe, VTT leads Work Package 3, which will perform case studies in the Global South and the Global North. Nina is particularly excited for being involved in the implementation of case studies in Ecuador and South Africa “as having education in international business studies understanding different country contexts gives you valuable perspectives to reflect your national context”. She is also interested in learning about the “different insights and understandings given to well-being economy” within the broader scope of ToBe.
As for ToBe’s strength, Nina considers the gathering of experts from different backgrounds with the goal of discussing and problematising the project’s topic as “one of the greatest achievements already”, looking forward to seeing the result. However, this is also a challenge, which Nina sees rather as an opportunity to “produce new knowledge and advance policy understanding how to govern societies and economies to reach sustainable wellbeing”.
When asked about what other partner’s work she is interested in, Nina would like to “learn more about Political ecology therefore taking a peek in our Croatian colleagues’ IPE’s work sounds interesting”.
Well, we are incredibly excited to see what are the outcomes of Work Package 3 case studies, and which Nina and the rest of the VTT team the best of luck in their work on ToBe!