Multidisciplinary cooperation with national and international higher education institutions, research institutes, networks and scientific societies, as well as with NGOs and youth policy actors, is an essential part of the Finnish Youth Research Society’s activities. The impact of our activities is enhanced by our close cooperation with Finnish youth sector actors.
International cooperation
Internationality is an integral part of the Finnish Youth Research Society’s activities in many ways. We are involved in a number of comparative research projects, with research settings either in or outside Europe. In these projects, issues such as democracy, the status of young people, migration, generations and gender, and the possibilities of digital assistance are the subject of a wide range of analyses. Global dialogue will also be strengthened on issues related to youth work research. Many of our research projects have top international researchers in their steering and support groups.
We are constantly seeking to strengthen our international partnerships with major foreign universities and research institutes working in the field of youth studies. One well-established form of international activity is to invite foreign youth researchers to Finland as visiting lecturers or for research visits, for example as partners in research projects. Similarly, researchers from the Finnish Youth Research Society have done research visits to partner universities abroad.
We are also active in strengthening and maintaining the Nordic cooperation in youth research.
In addition to their international research activities, researchers actively participate in international seminars and conferences and are members of international networks of experts. Among the most important of these are YOUNG journal, the EU/EN Youth Partnership and its sub-networks, such as the European Knowledge Centre for Youth Policy, the Youth Wiki correspondent network, the Pool of European Youth Researchers and the Perspectives on Youth – European Youth Partnership Series.
Domestic partnerships and networks
The Finnish Youth Research Society has well-established partnerships within the Ministry of Education and Culture. Our close partners also include the State Youth Council (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.) and the youth centres of excellence in Finland.
The Finnish Youth Research Society is also an influential actor in science policy and we operate actively with other scientific associations and with the Federation of Finnish Learned Societies (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.). We also maintain an ongoing dialogue with the Finnish National Board on Research Integrity (TENK) (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.) through our own Ethics Committee of Youth and Childhood Studies.
Teaching and research cooperation takes place in particular with the Finnish University Network for Youth Studies YUNET (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.), which coordinates teaching and guidance in youth studies in Finland. The member organizations of YUNET are Universities of Helsinki, Oulu, Tampere and Turku, the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences and the Finnish Youth Research Society.
We also cooperate with several other universities, higher education institutions and research institutes, such as the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.), Itla Children’s Foundation (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.) and Finnish social security institution Kela (Visit an external site. The link opens in a new tab.).