Editors:
Toni Ruuska
is University Lecturer at the Centre for Consumer Society Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki; Principal Investigator of Underdogs of Just Transition research project (2024–2028); Co-editor of Mayfly Books. Ruuska has co-edited Sustainability beyond Technology (Oxford, 2021) and is the author of Reproduction Revisited: Capitalism, Higher Education and Ecological Crisis (Mayfly, 2019). In addition to wide-ranging critique of capitalism, and technology, his research deals with degrowth, self-provisioning, and alternatives to capitalism. Theoretically he is involved in ecological Marxism, eco-feminism, and degrowth.
Tina Nyfors
is Doctoral Researcher at the University of Helsinki. Her research focuses on sufficiency and her PhD thesis deals with sufficiency in the policy and environmental movement contexts. After the thesis is published, she will continue as a postdoctoral researcher. She has published, e.g., the article Ecological Sufficiency in Climate Policy: Towards Policies for Recomposing Consumption (Futura, 2020).
Contributors (alphabetical):
Karl-Johan Bonnedahl
PhD, Docent in Business administration at Umeå University. He is positioned within strong sustainability scholarship, and interested in conceptualizations, assumptions and ethics related to economic activities and the policy and discourse of sustainable development. Currently he’s doing applied research on social innovation with a focus on human-nature interaction and dependency, and on impact management, with a focus on mission-driven entrepreneurship and counselling.
Michel Bourban
is Assistant Professor in ethics and political philosophy at the University of Twente. He works on fields such as climate justice, environmental ethics,
Philip Cafaro
recently retired as Professor of philosophy at Colorado State University, USA and is co-Principal Investigator for The Overpopulation Project at Göteborg, Sweden. His work centers on environmental ethics, population and consumption issues, and the preservation of wild nature. He is a life member of the Sierra Club, a former ranger with the National Park Service, and past president of the International Society for Environmental Ethics. Cafaro is the author of Thoreau’s Living Ethics: Walden and the Pursuit of Virtue, and How Many Is Too Many? The Progressive Argument for Reducing Immigration into the United States.
Pasi Heikkurinen
is Professor of Sustainable Business at Lappeenranta-Lahti University of Technology; Chair of The Finnish Society for Environmental Social Science; Adjunct Professor of Sustainable Economy at the University of Helsinki; Adjunct Professor of Sustainability and Organizations at Aalto University; and Co-Founder of Sustainable Change Research Network. His sustainability research focuses on questions concerning the economy (especially degrowth), technology, and culture.
Mikko Jalas
is Associate Professor in Co-Innovation for Circular Solutions at the Department of Design at Aalto University School of Arts, Design and Architecture. His research focuses on consumption practices in affluent industrial countries, as well as time-use and societal rhythms. This line of research contributes to the critical questions of escalating demand and fair allocation of consumption opportunities. Empirically, his work has documented patterns of domestic energy use and other resource-intensive consumption practices.
Jessica Jungell-Michelsson
holds a PhD in sustainability sciences from the University of Helsinki. Her research has focused on strong sustainability and sufficiency, particularly in the food sector. Jungell-Michelsson currently works as an independent researcher and business sustainability advisor in Finland.
is Professor of Environmental Economics and Management in Lappeenranta–Lahti University of Technology, Lahti Campus. He has over 30 years of international experience in solving sustainability challenges in academia, in start-up businesses and in policy design. Currently he is also the Chair of Finnish Expert Panel for Sustainable Development, an independent science panel operating under the auspices of the Prime Minister’s Office of Finland. His research over the years has covered a variety of topics, including sustainability transitions of energy, food and textile systems, sustainable innovations, corporate responsibility strategies, life cycle assessment, environmental and energy policy, and sufficiency as a solution for polycrisis.
J. Mohorčich
is Assistant Professor at Lehman College, where he teaches courses in American politics, political philosophy, and science policy. His work discusses transport in an energy-constrained world, the effects of constructing global networks for high-capacity computing, the capacity of artificial intelligence to reproduce poetic conventions, and whether GMO s, nuclear power, and biofuels can be used to understand the development of cell-cultured meat. He has previously taught at Johns Hopkins University and the University of Mannheim. He is from Soldotna, Alaska.
Iana Nesterova
PhD, is Visiting Researcher at Roskilde University, Denmark, and a long-term practitioner of voluntary simplicity. Her research focuses on business and lived experiences of degrowth transformations. She is the author of the book Degrowth, depth and hope in sustainable business: Reflections from Denmark, Finland and Sweden, and a co-author of the book Deep transformations: A theory of degrowth.
Thomas Princen
is Faculty Member at the School for Environment and Sustainability at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, USA. His research ranges from the distancing of commerce to overconsumption, from ecological rationality to sufficiency. He currently works on the politics of urgent transition with projects on localization, fossil fuels, and extreme events. Among his books are The Logic of Sufficiency; Treading Softly: Paths to Ecological Order; Confronting Consumption; Ending the Fossil Fuel Era; The Localization Reader: Adapting to the Coming Downshift; Fire and Flood: Extreme Events and Social Change, Past, Present, Future, all published by MIT Press.
works as a researcher at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, focusing on happiness, sustainable well-being, and social sustainability across various cultures, disciplines, and methodologies. His interests include the individual, social, institutional, cultural, and interspecies aspects of happiness and well-being, aiming to support global sustainable well-being and the equal distribution of well-being.
Tere Vadén
PhD, Associate Professor, is a philosopher and founding member of BIOS Research Unit, where he works as a researcher on the effects of ecological crises and resource limits on Finnish society. He has worked as non-tenured professor in philosophy, art education and interactive media and is a long-time editor of the Finnish philosophical journal niin & näin. Vadén has published several monographs, including Heidegger, Zizek and Revolution (2014) and Energy and Experience (2015, with Antti Salminen).