About us

About us (under construction)

PROJECT PARTNERS

Emily Höckert

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Anna-Emilia Haapakoski

Outi Rantala

Stine Rybråten
Researcher
Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA)

Stine is a social anthropologist with an interest in human–nature relations and collaborative nature management processes grounded in Indigenous and local ways of knowing. Informed by relational perspectives and postcolonial thinking, she is attentive to the role of power, exclusion, knowledge-making and care in more-than-human practices.
Collaboration across knowledge systems and disciplines is central to Stine’s work, reflecting a commitment to more inclusive and responsible ways of living within a shared, multispecies world.

Lise Tingstad
Researcher, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA)

Lise is a conservation biologist and ecologist. Recently, her work has been focused on conservation and nature monitoring, and the development of tools and national standards and protocols for nature management and conservation. When out in the field collecting data, which is an important part of her research, she is a vegetation ecologist by training, but with a broad ecological interest.
As a conservationist, she also takes a profound interest in learning how people interact with nature, and how targeted communication and education can help make people more aware of nature, learn and be eager to learn about nature, and through that develop an intrinsic desire to take care of it.

Tuva Beyer Broch
Researcher, Norwegian Institute for Nature Research (NINA)

Tuva is a psychologically oriented anthropologist with a particular interest in people’s relations with more-than-human worlds, and how these relations are influenced by digital technologies and sensory experiences. Her work aligns closely with EcoPil’s focus on walking and sensing as restorative practices, foregrounding individuals’ embodied, affective, and relational engagements in nature. Tuva is committed to creative methodologies that enable intimate insights into lived experiences as they unfold in people’s daily lives. She also values interdisciplinary collaboration as a way to challenge disciplinary boundaries and disrupt habitual modes of thinking.

**Mattias Jansson**
Director of infrastructure and tourism development,
National pilgrim centre. 

Mattias Jansson holds a Master’s degree in nature-based tourism from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), with a specialization in the sustainable development of the St. Olav Ways in Norway. He has worked at the National Pilgrim Centre since 2013, where he is currently Director of Professional Affairs, leading the development of infrastructure and tourism. Mattias also has extensive and wide-ranging experience in general development work within nature-based tourism, including many years of professional practice
as a nature guide in numerous countries.

**Guro Berge Vistad**
Acting Managing Director /Head of Department
National pilgrim centre

Guro has an academic background in comparative religion, with a particular focus on the revival of pilgrimage in Norway. She has worked both operationally and administratively with the St. Olav Ways in Norway for more than ten years and is currently the acting head of the National Pilgrim Centre, a state-run public body responsible for pilgrimage development in Norway. She is also actively engaged in international collaboration within the European pilgrim route community.

Eva Gielen
Eva works as a researcher, as well as wilderness guide. She holds degrees in Biomedical Science and Global Health, complemented by extensive experience and training as a nature guide and facilitator. She is passionate about weaving together planetary health and human wellbeing, recognizing the deep interdependence between ecological systems and our own health. Eva’s work explores our roots and instincts through ancestral practices, survival skills, and eco-psychology. Her teaching and research invites people to reconnect with the natural world in ways that are both scientifically informed and deeply embodied.

Elva Björg Einarsdottír

Daijiro Yamagishi is a junior researcher and doctoral student in tourism studies at the University of Lapland. Previously, he served as a project assistant professor at Wakayama University, Japan, where he organized and developed community-based learning projects, namely the Local Partnership Program (LPP). His involvement in the LPP inspired his current PhD research, which explores educational encounters in/of tourism education. Drawing on post-humanist approaches and relational pedagogy, his work seeks to imagine and investigate alternative, caring, and relational ways of knowing and doing tourism.

After working with the small rice terrace community in rural Japan as part of LPP, he began to deeply appreciate his everyday surroundings and reflect on his relationship with the environment. Moving to Rovaniemi further heightened this attentiveness. One of his favourite moments there is swimming in the Kemijoki River with his colleagues from the Sustainable Natureculture Multispecies Futures research community. Until the river froze, he visited Tamaanlaakso Beach, the closest beach to the university, every Monday before lunch. Entering the waters of Kemi River became an embodied act of unlearning body–mind dualism, reminding him to embrace relational thinking in his research

Maxim Vlasov and Jasmine Zhang (other photos)

Juulia Tikkanen is a doctoral researcher in tourism research at the University of Lapland. Her PhD explores utopia as a way of imagining-with through methodological and pedagogical approaches related to tourism futures. Besides utopia, she conducts research on tourism degrowth. For her, the inspiration stems from those who dare to imagine differently, as alternative futures are possible. Collective imagining-with challenges individualism and anthropocentrism, and aims to bring different actors together to think, imagine, and discuss futures that concern everyone. She spends her free time in the nearby forests of Pöyliövaara and Ounasvaara in Rovaniemi, as well as on the coastline and mountains of Senja, Northern Norway. In addition to spending time outdoors, she finds joy in knitting, handicrafts, art, and literature.

Research collaborators

Bryan S.R. Grimwood

Michela J. Stinson

Chris E. Hurst

Veera Kinnunen

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