My best – and most bittersweet – memories of the University of Helsinki are the comings and goings, and the returns. My first arrival, beginning my studies at the University in 1975, was full of joy and enthusiasm: the world of intellectual discussions, theorising, speculating about politics and philosophy – which I had enjoyed already at school – was now legitimately open for me: at the University!

I loved this feeling and wanted it to go on forever. However, many young researchers can’t always get what they want: your career as a researcher doesn't necessarily start right away. I didn't have an office at the University for a long time after the completion of my MA, and I spent my working days elsewhere. Yet, the comings and goings to and from the university were constant for me during that time as well: the university café, conversations, study groups, the university library, your own networks, seminars, conferences and even foreign universities were open to you as long as you were active in the scholarly community. I feel a great deal of sympathy towards the young people who passionately long to be in an intellectual milieu, and I want to develop our doctoral programmes in the fields of humanities and social sciences so that as many talented and motivated young researchers as possible get a chance to get started in good time.

I officially returned to the university once I got funding for my doctoral thesis, but it was a departure at the same time, this time to California, and for a four-year period. The departure was exciting: towards the great unknown. When I got back from California in the mid-1990s, I understood that this was one of the most important moments in my intellectual life: I brought back something that would not have arrived here the same way had I not moved. I firmly believe that individual researchers moving to other contexts for sufficiently long periods of time is still an essential part of university life, even in the current more global era.

The University is a site of constant motion and a huge network – in fact Universitas has always been a global phenomenon, predating the current globalization as such. My frequent experiences of working abroad have encouraged me to help the University grow into a place where transnationality is an everyday element: people come and go. Provincialism is bad for us – we should not remain among ourselves, we must always be curious about the rest of the world. Success in gaining research funding has subsequently given me a possibility to enhance the mobility of scholars, to arrange events, to keep networks going  – all of this is so very important for future generations of researchers.

In the 2000s, my car and moving boxes in the Topelia courtyard took me to Jyväskylä for four years to work as a professor. I think that it is extremely important for the Finnish university system that professors also have experience of working at other universities than their own Alma Mater. I feel grateful when I think of Jyväskylä. Leaving the Topelia courtyard and my return to the very same spot with my boxes, when becoming a professor at the University of Helsinki are permanently etched in my memory.

Becoming international does not always entail leaving – after a couple of years spent as a researcher at the University of Manchester, I was lucky that my British spouse applied for and was successful in gaining a position as a professor in Helsinki, which again further internationalizes Helsinki university. This arrival was important for me, since Helsinki is now even more definitely my home, even though I still continue to travel the world!