We are delighted to announce keynote speakers for EFGS 2018 as Toni Ahlqvist, Julien Grunfelder and Ed Parsons. We look forward to welcoming our guest speakers in Helsinki.
Toni Ahlqvist (Ph.D.), Professor of Regional Development and Policy at the University of Oulu and Adjunct Professor of Economic Geography at the University of Turku. His research focuses on regional planning and policy, spatial political economy, futures studies, and technology foresight. He has lead numerous research projects that have covered, e.g., emerging technologies, construction and uses of futures knowledge in organizations and regions, strategic development of industrial branches, such as forest industry in South Australia, and varied aspects of knowledge-based society. His most recent projects have dealt with potential societal antagonisms of radical emerging technologies and futures of land use planning in Finland. Prof. Ahlqvist’s research has been published in such journals as Technological Forecasting and Social Change, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, New Political Economy, Geopolitics, Geografiska Annaler A: Human Geography, Space and Polity, Technology Analysis and Strategic Management, Futures, Foresight, and Science and Public Policy.
Julien Grunfelder (Ph.D.), Head of GIS department at Nordregio, is specialised in GIS, cartography, traffic analysis and regional planning. Julien has a Ph.D. degree in Urban and Territorial Studies at the University of Copenhagen (in cooperation with DTU Transport), where he studied the relation between urban spatial structure and commuting behaviours in two Danish urban regions with national directive. Previously, he worked at the Danish Transport Authority (Trafikstyrelsen) as a traffic planner and GIS-specialist. During his period at Nordregio, Julien has been actively involved in Nordic and European projects by collecting data, producing maps and developing reports, e.g. the ESPON project The World in Europe: Global FDI Flows towards Europe. Among others, Julien is the project leader of the Nordregio´s flagship report State of the Nordic Region, a report dealing with socio-economic indicators of the variety of municipal and regional territories of the Nordic Region. His mother tongue is French and can work in English and Scandinavian languages.
Ed Parsons is the Geospatial Technologist of Google, with responsibility for evangelising Google’s mission to organise the world’s information using geography. In this role he maintains links with Governments, Universities, Research and Standards Organisations which are involved in the development of Geospatial Technology. He is a member of the the Board of Directors of the Open Geospatial Consortium and was co-chair of the W3C/OGC Spatial Data on the Web Working Group. He is a Visiting Professor at University College London and an Executive Fellow at the University of Aberdeen Business School. Ed Parsons was the first Chief Technology Officer in the 200-year-old history of Ordnance Survey, and was instrumental in moving the focus of the organisation from mapping to Geographical Information. He came to the Ordnance Survey from Autodesk, where he was EMEA Applications Manager for the Geographical Information Systems (GIS) Division.