As a student, I had many opportunities to change my mind while choosing my subject. I remember studying a little in the Kallio library for the entrance exams for the Political Science Faculty and the Agriculture and Forestry Faculty. With the former subject, I hated the charts and graphs, and while combing through the latter I started to feel the pain that certain beetles have of living between the bark and the tree to such an extent that I needed to get up from my seat and circle the reading room. Lauri Hakulinen’s book Suomen kielen rakenne ja kehitys (‘The structure and evolution of the Finnish language’) fell off the shelf and into my hand, so I opened it up and started to read it. The world and life started to become organized: I had found my subject.

My best single memory from the University of Helsinki is from the beginning of the 1990s. While attending my Master’s seminar in 1990–91, I got to know the new side of the Main Building and the cloakroom porters Auli and Ritva.

I am on the Board of Trustees of the Kone Foundation. The foundation’s basic nature of charitable work is positive, but maybe I have not been there more time than is required of the vice chairperson. The foundation supports the humanities, social sciences and environmental research, as well as art and culture.

My dream is to get people to understand the cultural nature of environmental problems and to get the solution to the problems from the humanist point of view. As a multi-humanist I am happy to work with researchers in my field.