HUMLOG 15 Year Anniversary

Last week, the HUMLOG Institute Celebrate 15 Years of Bridging Research and Practice. Having engaged with projects, humanitarian organizations, and institutions the world over, this event brought an international presence of researchers, practictioners, and stakeholders to the halls of Hanken for a day discussing the past, present, and future of Humanitarian Logistics.

The day was structured with a series of speakers interspersed with networking opportunities, project updates, and coffee breaks. This was an opportunity for university rectors, practicing researchers, visiting practitioners, and ambitious PhD and masters students to share and converse on the work being done at the moment.

The first speaker, Marianne Jahre, spoke as academic keynote, about innovations and changes in the future of humantiarian logistics. She surprised everyone with her poem created with the support of Chat GPT.

Jonas Stumpf spoke on Bridging the Gap between Research and Practice through his work with CHORD, the research center for humanitarian logsitics and regional development at Kuehne Logistics Unviersity.

Jonas Stumpf also received the Best Doctoral Thesis Award from the HUMLOG Board this year for his work entitled “Exploring supply chains to strengthen humanitarian operations in times of growing needs, scarce resources and major disruptions”.

Stephen Cahill, Chief of Humanitarian Services at WFP was the afternoon keynote speaker on practitioner work being done in the humanitarian world, speaking from experience at WFP as well as the former Glogal Logistics Cluster Coordinator.

Stephen Cahill can also be seen below discussing and conversing with researchers and stakeholders through the event, with Erkko Professor in Humanitarian Logistics Gyöngyi Kovács to his right below.

Speakers and participants alike shared experiences and stories at coffee and lunch. BI Norwegian Business School’s rector a HUMLOG Institute Co-Founder Karen Spens seen speaking here to the right.

The event also brought together Directors and founders from the HUMLOG Institute’s past in the form of (from left to right) Wojciech Piotrowicz, associate professor at Hanken School of Economics, Karen Spens, Gyöngyi Kovács, , and Diego Vega, current Director of the HUMLOG Institute, and co-host of the event.

Virva Tuomala, post-doctoral researcher at the HUMLOG Institute presented along with Wojciech Piotrowicz and Gyöngyi Kovács on the active projects currently underway at the HUMLOG Institute.

Outside of the speakers series, doctoral students like Helleke Heikkinen shared their research with interested guests and Hanken stakeholders alike. This gave everyone a chance to hear about all the work being done throughout all aspects of the HUMLOG Institute.

For more pictures from the event, see networking, lunch, and coffee images featured below! PhD researchers, post doctoral researchers, masters students, practitioners, speakers, and professors can be seen sharing stories, experiences, and histories in the halls of Hanken.