University of Oulu
The University of Oulu is an international science university that creates new knowledge, well-being and innovations for the future through research and education. The University of Oulu, founded in 1958, is one of the largest and most multidisciplinary universities in Finland. The university has a current student body of 14,200 students across 8 faculties and 3,800 employees, and it ranks in the top 3% of world universities. The University of Oulu strives for excellent quality and high impact in all its activities. Our researchers publish several thousand scientific papers every year and new research-based start-ups arise yearly.
At the University of Oulu, the CROCUS project is situated within the Frontiers of Arctic and Global Resilience (FRONT) Research programme at the University of Oulu, which is funded by the Research Council of Finland in the Profi7 initiative. FRONT aims to advance the existing frontiers of knowledge on the changes needed for resilience building, and to find solutions to the wicked problems of sustainability. With a strong focus on responsibility and sustainability, FRONT takes on a systemic approach to further our understanding of resilience in the context of global changes, like climate change. FRONT joining the CROCUS consortium was a very natural co-operation since RRA and CCT are strongly connected to one of FRONT´s main themes: regional resilience.
Within FRONT, the project falls under the Geography Research Unit (GRU), which provides an internationally well-known, active and attractive working environment with a global research scope. The Unit has specific research areas in human and physical geography, which offer significant synergy to each other and possibilities for a dialogue between scholars. The general shared aim of the Unit is to perform theoretical and empirical research that helps to understand regional change and explain global problems at and across various spatial scales. The Unit’s researchers contribute to the solutions of global problems by addressing the sustainable development of society and the environment. Sustainability, resilience and tourism geographies are some of the core research foci that relate to the CROCUS project framework.
Jarkko Saarinen
E-mail: jarkko.saarinen@oulu.fi
Team
Jarkko Saarinen is Professor of Human Geography at the University of Oulu, Finland. He serves as the Director of the Frontiers of Arctic and Global Resilience (FRONT) program at the University. His research interests include sustainability, tourism development, cultural and indigenous tourism climate change adaptation, resilience, and tourism-community relations. His recent publications include co-authored and co-edited books: Handbook on Tourism Governance (2025, Elgar), Climate Change and Tourism in Southern Africa (2022, Routledge); Resilient Destinations (2019, Routledge). Currently he serves as an Editor for Tourism Geographies and Associate Editor for Annals of Tourism Research and Development Southern Africa.
He is the University of Oulu team leader for the project and works across all work packages, particularly WP3 which examines cross-border cultural tourism cooperation in Europe’s macro-regions.
Bailey Ashton Adie is a researcher in the Geography Research Unit at the University of Oulu, where she is part of the FRONT Research program as well as the CROCUS project. She is the co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Heritage Tourism and sits on the editorial boards of Tourism Geographies, Tourism Planning & Development, Tourism Management Perspectives, and El Periplo Sustentable. She is also Chair of the Leisure Studies Association. Her research interests include World Heritage, heritage tourism, community resilience, community-based tourism, natural hazards and tourism, tourism and development, second homes, and dark tourism. Her work has been published in book chapters as well as in leading journals, including Annals of Tourism Research, Current Issues in Tourism, and the Journal of Sustainable Tourism. She is the author of the book World Heritage and Tourism: Marketing and Management (2019) and co-editor of Second Homes and Climate Change (2023).
She is working across all work packages, especially WP3 where her expertise in cultural heritage, community development, and transboundary heritage governance will be particularly useful.
Dr. Lotta Haukipuro is currently a coordinator of the Frontiers of Arctic and Global Resilience (FRONT) Profi7 research programme (2023–2028). She received her doctoral degree from Oulu Business School in early 2019. Her interdisciplinary doctoral dissertation focused on user-centric development of products and services with living lab approach in different contexts. Her research interests include innovation management, user-centric development, living labs and co-creation.
In the project, she will be working on WP4, supporting the development and coordination of the living lab process.
Finland