TEERC

The purpose of the Turku Environmental Ethics Research is to support research and teaching in environmental ethics, engage societally on environmental issues, and increase the visibility of environmental ethical research at the University of Turku. The Center advances international cooperation and collaboration in environmental ethics, particularly in the Nordic region. It also responds to the on-going environmental crisis by producing 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 2024 the unit has seen five doctoral defences covering 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.

The TEERC emblem is designed by Linnea Luuppala and Aida Luuppala.