This month we are happy to welcome Ossi Ollinaho, a lecturer in Global Development Studies at University of Helsinki, on the podcast. In the conversation, we talk with Ossi about his journey from studying math and physics, to a Doctorate in Industrial Engineering and Management, to the experiences and questions which brought him to work in Global Development Studies. We also dive into how transitions to agroforestry techniques can turn out good, bad, and ugly, as well as how the systemic concept of keeping "business as usual" is a seductive slide to catastrophe (and how people's daily lives can impact the system, even if we don't realize we can).

You can find Ossi's University of Helsinki profile here: https://researchportal.helsinki.fi/en/persons/ossi-ollinaho

Ossi's works mentioned:

Ollinaho, O. I., Pedlowski, M., & Kröger, M. (2022). Toxic turn in Brazilian agriculture? The political economy of pesticide legalisation in post-2016 Brazil. Third World Quarterly. https://doi.org/10.1080/01436597.2022.2153031

Ollinaho, O., & Kröger, M. (2021). Agroforestry transitions: The good, the bad and the ugly. Journal of Rural Studies, 82, 210-221. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.01.016

Ollinaho, O. (2022). What is ‘business as usual’? Towards a theory of cumulative sociomaterial change. Globalizations. https://doi.org/10.1080/14747731.2022.2142013

Ollinaho, O. I. (2018). Virtualization of the life-world. Human Studies, 41(2), 193-209. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10746-017-9455-3

Other works mentioned

Berger, P. L., & Luckmann, T. (1991). The social construction of reality: A treatise in the sociology of knowledge. Penguin Books.

The International Alfred Schutz Circle for Phenomenology and Interpretive Social Science - https://www.schutzcircle.org/

*Note - apologies for the delay in the episode release! The episode was scheduled to launch on August 25, but for some reason the system did not release the episode. Unfortunately we have been really busy and it was only just now brought to our attention. Apologies again and we will be double checking in the future to make sure it launches on time!