It is a great pleasure to welcome you to Tampere. Since the birth of the Politics and the Arts Group, Finns have been active in organising panels and workshops. It is now good to have the meeting in Finland and Tampere. The conference theme, "Narrative, Identity, Order" is very close to us as well. We have just established an interdisciplinary Finnish Network of Narrative Studies, which brings together people from different universities, faculties and fields. In the University of Tampere we have been proud of our contribution in qualitative social research. For these reasons I hope that you will have a good time in Tampere, and that we can find visions for future co-operation.