In the previous blog post we highlighted our forthcoming conference in Tampere, Finland from 5 to 8 May this year. If this alone does not tempt you to book a place on the conference (still time to put an abstract in!) then the city of Tampere should. Tampere is the third largest city in Finland, with a population of around 220,000 and is located at 61 degrees north of the Equator. This is about the same latitude as southern Greenland, the Northwest Territories of Canada and further north than Anchorage, Alaska. However, it is not quite as far north as Yakutsk in Siberia so it’s bound to be very warm in May!
What is there to do in Tampere (besides the conference, obviously)? There is so much to do and see that you should probably spend a week there if you can. The Visit Tampere pages are really useful for planning what to do and they have loads of useful videos and guides there.
The conference will of course be excellent and the confirmed list of plenary speakers is as follows – and of course it includes Markku Sotarauta from the University of Tampere.
EU Regional Policy
- Michael Parkinson, Liverpool John Moores University, UK
- John Bachtler, University of Strathclyde, UK
Future Challenges of Local and Regional Governance
- John Tomaney, University college London, UK
- Dariusz Wocjik, University of Oxford, UK – giving this year’s SEA Lecture
Agents of Knowledge Economy and Innovation
- Markku Sotarauta, University of Tampere, Finland
- Martin Kenney, University of California, Davis, USA
It should be an excellent conference in a very exciting northerly location – which remains light well into the evening in May. We really hope you can make it and enjoy the city of Tampere.
