The first Wisdom Days: Science for Sustainability Transformations conference takes place in May 2026 at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland. The international conference will foster scientific discussions and new connections across disciplines and organizations to create knowledge, understanding and solutions for sustainability transformations.
The world faces escalating climate crises, biodiversity loss, and growing social inequalities. Coping with these challenges requires sustainability transformations: profound, systemic changes in societal structures, technologies, values and behaviors aimed at achieving long-term coexistence between humans and nonhumans, which supports their flourishing in ecological, social, and economic terms.
Research on sustainability transformations is more urgent and relevant than ever
Sustainability transformations require shifts in governance, innovation, and cultural paradigms.
- We’re organizing the Wisdom Days conference to bring together multi- and interdisciplinary scholarship on sustainability transformations. We need collaboration across disciplines to create knowledge, understanding and solutions, explains Laura Tuominen, Chair of the organizing committee.
- Interdisciplinary collaboration means having to learn new concepts and ways of thinking. This takes time, but the outcomes are worth it, adds Director of the University of Jyväskylä School of Resource Wisdom (JYU.Wisdom) Janne Kotiaho. One example is the concept of planetary well-being that we have developed in a multidisciplinary group within JYU.Wisdom. The concept is gaining traction in the academic community.
Keynotes will explore Indigenous futures, behavioural change, and regeneration
The conference’s three keynote speakers will provide insights from different fields of research. Research professor Rauna Kuokkanen (University of Lapland, Finland) will begin by posing the following question: What would it mean to design sustainability transformations that begin from Indigenous futures, rather than fit Indigenous peoples, their ways of knowing, governing, and relating into pre-existing models?
Professor Christian A. Klöckner (Norwegian University of Science and Technology) will present success stories of how people manage to change their behaviour in a more sustainable direction, but also failures to do so. Specialized in environmental psychology, he reflects on the potential and limits of behaviour science to address the big challenges of our societies.
Professor Jörn Fischer (Leuphana University Lüneburg, Germany) will explore regeneration, which has entered discourses in several different fields. He notes that parallels between the fields can offer generalized insights on regenerative systems, which can in turn spark further insights for sustainability science and practice.
A respectful atmosphere is key for new ideas and connections
Fostering new connections between researchers and the co-creation of knowledge are key goals at Wisdom Days. The organizing committee aim to create an inspiring, respectful atmosphere throughout the conference.
- In addition to discovered results and answers, we sometimes need to ask pressing questions and present less mature ideas in order to move forward. Our goal is to create a conference where participants may comfortably discuss matters that don’t yet have answers, says Tuominen.
Abstract submission is open
The conference accepts proposals for talks, speed-talks, posters, and workshops. Abstracts should be related, but not necessarily limited to the following sub-themes: Transformations (Understanding and advancing sustainability transitions); Production/consumption systems and the economy; Diversity in world and worldviews (Biodiversity and multispecies relations); Sustainable and planetary well-being; Action, arts, and agency (Co-creating sustainability); Nature Positive Universities.
The University of Jyväskylä is a pledged member of the Nature Positive Universities network, and the conference will also address higher education institutes' (HEI’s) role in driving sustainability transformations or reducing HEI’s negative impacts on nature.
More information and abstract submission guidelines are available on the conference webpage: www.jyu.fi/wisdomdays
Registration for the conference will open in January 2026.
The conference is organized by the University of Jyväskylä School of Resource Wisdom and the national Sustainability Transformations Doctoral Education Pilot.
Further information: