Aboagora 2016: Fate/Urðr

Aboagora 2016 was held on June 15-17 at the Sibelius Museum in Turku. The symposium explored the ways in which agency is understood in relation to the past. What possibilities do we have in our lives and how are we bound by the past? Layers of lived lives mark our surroundings, our societies, and our bodies. They are inscribed by the choices of others before us and yet, at each moment, we are given a degree of free will. Can we understand ourselves and our place in the world only by recognizing our heritage, our roots? Does our past bind us to a fate we cannot alter?

Agora Speakers

Topi Lehtipuu (Tenor, Director of the Helsinki Festival) & Hannu Salmi (Professor of Cultural History and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Turku), “‘Ah, bitter fate, ah, wicked, cruel fate…’ –  Expressions of Destiny and Free Will”

Pekka Haavisto (Member of the Finnish Parliament), “Peace, Environment – and Fate”

Virpi Lummaa (Academy Professor in Ecology, Evolutionary Biology and Ecophysiology, University of Turku), “Fated to Family Life? How Early Life Events Lead to Differences in Marriage, Childbearing and Longevity in Finland”

Riem Spielhaus (Professor of Islamic Studies at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, Head of the Department of Textbook and Society at the Georg-Eckert-Institute for International Textbook Research), “Heritage, Destiny and Free Will: European Muslims Struggling with Fate”

In addition to the keynote addresses and workshops, Okeanos, a site-specific sound and light installation by IC-98 in collaboration with Max Savikangas, was available to the public during Aboagora.

Aboagora 2016 Programme (PDF)