TEERC
Turku Environmental Ethics Research Center supports research and teaching in environmental ethics, engages societally on environmental issues, and increases the visibility of environmental ethical research at the University of Turku. The Center advances international cooperation and collaboration in environmental ethics and responds to the on-going environmental crisis by producing philosophical knowledge on environmental ethical questions and values.
History
The Philosophy unit in University of Turku has a long and established tradition in environmental ethics, and more broadly in environmental philosophy. For a long time, there has been constantly a large number of environmental philosophers in Turku, even on international standards, which has resulted in a close-knit, collegial community of researchers.
The history of environmental philosophical research in our unit spans to early 1990s, to the work of professor Juhani Pietarinen and docent Markku Oksanen, who defended his thesis on environmental ethics and ownership under Pietarinen’s supervision in 1998. Since then, environmental ethical research has flourished in Turku, and by 2026 the unit has seen seven doctoral defences on different topics of environmental ethics.
In our unit, there has been research on a wide range of topics like ownership of nature, climate engineering, the philosophy of environmental politics, animal ethics, philosophy of food, the concept of naturalness, and de-exctinction. This research can be characterised as practical and applied, and our philosophers have been interested in societally relevant and topical issues, such as climate ethics.
Moreover, environmental philosophy has been taught regularly since early 2010s, and teaching has also been offered to other faculties.
TEERC was established in June 2024. It was founded by the center’s first director Helena Siipi and coordinator Mikko Puumala. An opening seminar for the center’s researchers was organized in August 2024, and the center was joined by eleven researchers, nearly half of them doctoral researchers.
Current Research and Activity
Turku Environmental Ethics Research Center carries out a wide range of research projects in practical and applied environmental ethics, with special focus on environmental crises, sustainability transitions, animal ethics, environmental education and space ethics. Our researchers work in multidisciplinary research projects and in international ethics advisory assignments along with providing teaching, courses and lectures on environmental ethical topics.
As part of the core functions of the center, our researchers gather for a monthly research seminar and organize the European Environmental Philosophy Series online seminar each quarter together with CETE-P and The Centre for Ethics as Study in Human Value at Pardubice university. Writing retreats and organizing the annual PhD seminar in environmental ethics are also part of the center’s habitual activity.
Center’s activity supports the visibility and effectivity of environmental ethics also by attending and helping in organizing public events on environmental ethics as well as by offering assessments and statements for example on research and environmental ethical recommendations and many of the center’s researchers also work with different environmental, research and animal ethical organizations and societies.
The TEERC emblem is designed by Linnea Luuppala and Aida Luuppala.
