It was my late teacher, Professor Päivi Setälä , who gave me my humanities hat. I wear it on occasion and I've noticed it provokes questions. The slogan comes from an employment skills project of the Faculty of Arts from the early 2000s.

The simile between a humanities scholar and iron is fitting in many ways. Pure iron is soft but in alloys it becomes strong; iron is one of the most important metals known to humanity, and even the human body needs iron. When the economy is weak, the justification and mission of humanities research seems to come quickly in conflict with demands for material progress. In answering global challenges, even in merely trying to comprehend them, you need the contributions of many fields, also the discoveries of the humanities.

The hat also is a symbolic reminder of Dr Päivi Setälä, who encouraged her students to climb the stairs of knowledge yet never painted too rosy a picture of the life of a researcher. She emphasised participating in social discourse, networking, popularising your research, and active academic citizenship: you shouldn't hide in your corner and complain and you should stand out from the background.