Kaari Mattila

Professor of Practice in Human Rights and Democracy with the University of Eastern Finland

Dr. Kaari Mattila is a social scientist and a leading human rights advocate, teacher and speaker. Kaari has worked for 25 years on human rights, children’s rights and gender equality within civil society, government, and academia. She currently works as a Professor of Practice in Human Rights and Democracy with the University of Eastern Finland.

Through her work in executive positions with the Finnish League for Human Rights and Amnesty International Finland, she has played a key role in increasing understanding of human rights in hitherto less obvious questions such as poverty, security or sports. She has served in several national delegations and as board member in organisations such as the International Federation for Human Rights and Save the Children Finland.

She is the initiator of internationally awarded human rights education programmes within municipal youth work and within the sports ecosystem and has seen concretely how strengthened human rights awareness can make a change into everyday lives of children and youth. As a founder of networks bringing together civil society, researchers, municipalities or top athletes, Kaari always looks for opportunities to build coalitions – including with unusual suspects. She believes this is essential if we are to protect international rules that were set to protect us all.

In her speech Kaari Mattila argues that human rights, democracy and rule of law are central to building resilience and trust among children, youth and adults alike. In globally turbulent times there is an urgent need to strengthen knowledge on these corner stones of our society.

While many governments are failing human rights commitments, municipalities and cities have an ever more important role to take. With enhanced understanding on how human rights relate to everyday work in schools, health, sports or public security, cities are better equipped to defend what is so precious in our societies: democracy, rule of law, human rights and security.

Mads Vestergaard

Philosopher and postdoc at Roskilde University in Denmark

Mads Vestergaard is philosopher and postdoc at Roskilde University in Denmark researching how digitalization affects trust. He holds a PhD in digitalization and democracy and has published books on the societal and epistemic effects of digitalization. This includes a critical investigation of the changes of the media environments and attention economies – see Reality Lost (open access) – and an exploration of the threats to democracy, autonomy, rule of law, and trust posed by increasing digital surveillance in the (Danish) book Digital totalitarisme.

“Maintaining Trust in Digitalized Societies”

The technological development and increasing digitalization of our societies and everyday lives risk to erode different kinds and relations of trust. The novel media landscapes – in which social media platforms play a significant part, and generative AI takes production of misinformation to the next level – are highly conductive of narratives of distrust fueling both polarization between groups of citizens and contribute to eroding the institutional trust in public authorities. In addition, digital surveillance of the citizens also poses a threat to trust – both to citizens’ trust in the authorities and to the trust of the authorities in the citizens, fundamental in democratic societies, which in increasingly supplanted by control. How are we to meet the challenges to trust posed by the rapid digital development?

Ingar Brattbakk

Senior Researcher, Norwegian Social Research (NOVA) & Centre for Housing and Welfare Research (HOUSINGWEL), Oslo Metropolitan University 

Assistant professor II, Department of Sociology and Human Geography, University of Oslo (UiO)

Tentative title of the presentation : “City wide segregation in a Nordic context”

Research Interests:
Dr. Brattbakk combines quantitative & qualitative methods in social research focusing on:

• Urban inequality and segregation
• Neighbourhood effects on youth development
• Housing policy and welfare
• Gentrification and urban governance
• Youth participation and trust in urban areas with disadvantaged living conditions
• Sociocultural place analysis and participatory urban development

He has contributed significantly to understanding how urban environments shape social outcomes, particularly for children and youth in marginalized areas.

Monica Rosten

Research Professor, Norwegian Social Research (NOVA), Oslo Metropolitan University  

Tentative title of the presentation:  “Youth, (dis)trust and territorial stigma”

Research Interests:
Her research spans a wide range of topics related to youth and social inequality, including:

• Youth culture and identity
• Minority youth and stigma
• Urban marginalization and territorial stigma
• Domestic violence and social control
• Youth crime and preventive work
• Youth participation and co-research
• Area-based initiatives and welfare state dynamics

She is particularly interested in the intersection of ethnicity, gender, and social class, and how these shape young people’s experiences in urban environments.

Sveinung Sandberg

“Trusting the Untrustworthy: Youth, Marginalization, Extremism and Crime”

Sveinung Sandberg is a sociologist and professor in Criminology at the University of Oslo. His research focuses on processes of marginalization, violence, masculinity, illegal drugs, radicalization and social movements. He has published several books including Street Capital, Cannabis Culture, Narrative Criminology and Young Muslim Voices. Sandberg just finalized a four-year research project studying life-stories and life-courses leading to crime in seven countries in Latin America. He is currently continuing this research on four continents, including in Norway.

Line Lerche Mørck

“Crossing boundaries: Preventing polarization, radicalization and gang involvement”

Line Lerche Mørck, professor in educational psychology at Aarhus University, is known for her practice research into ways of holistic prevention, boundary communities, gang exit, and mo(ve)ments beyond radicalization and marginalization. She has written books about boundary communities and Community-building practices and articles about counter-hegemonic alternatives. She has co-authored journal articles about gang exit, forensic psychiatry and social practice ethics – with co-researchers, where two is former gang leaders. Currently she is leading two collective research projects: “Boundary Youth Work – Bridging and Community-Building in Marginalized Residential Urban Areas”, and ”Youth Pedagogical Transformative Work. How can community-building contribute to overcoming ethnic othering and discrimination?”

In the keynote professor Line Lerche Mørck present prolonged co-research with two former gang leaders struggling to move beyond forensic psychiatry and to build a meaning full life, two leaders who use to be enemies in a gang war years before we started this research collaborations. Line reflects on how you need to cross boundaries to (re)produce trust in times of increased polarization. Along the 11 and 8 year long research collaborations, she has developed new standards of social practice ethic, that prioritize ethics of care and recognition. She will discuss possibilities and dilemmas of mutuality of care relations (Løgstrup). She will also discuss ways of doing thrust and transformative research across other research collaborations with both marginalized and established parties.

Gert Tingard Svendsen

“Trust – the Nordic X-Factor?”

Abstract:
Many people ask themselves what the real secret behind the Nordic countries is. Why are they both prosperous and among the world’s happiest nations—while institutions also function so well? That is precisely why some of the world’s leading social scientists are looking to the Nordics to understand what makes the difference—what the special X-factor might be. The answer may lie in an unexpected place: in the trust and relationships people have with one another. For the Nordic countries are, in fact, world champions in trust!

BIO:

Professor, PhD, at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. His main research areas are trust, social capital, and climate policy. An example of his research dissemination is the book Trust (Johns Hopkins University Press), which received a positive review in Forbes Magazine by Keld Jensen and has also been translated into Chinese. In 2016, Svendsen was appointed Knight of the Order of the Dannebrog for his pioneering research on trust, and in 2025 he received one of the Ministry of Culture’s national awards for “The Trust Society” as intangible cultural heritage, which is now being nominated for inclusion on UNESCO’s World Heritage List.

Personal website: https://pure.au.dk/portal/en/persons/gts%40ps.au.dk

Link to Trust: https://www.press.jhu.edu/books/title/23066/trust

Link to review of Trust by Keld Jensen in Forbes:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/keldjensen/2014/06/22/trust-a-fragile-but-wealth-building-commodity/