Pilvi Torsti Finland UWC of the Adriatic Historian:Balkans Specialist

The vital thing that my time at the College provided me with was the belief that it is always possible to find ways to do meaningful things and get results if you have confidence in yourself and your sense of the world

 

Pilvi Torsti (AD 93-95) was instrumental in setting up the UWC-IBO Initiative’s United World College in Mostar, which opened in September 2006. Now based at home in Finland, she is writing a book on the region.

 

“The break-up of Yugoslavia and the Bosnian war were defining characteristics of my College years,” explains Pilvi. “Several of my closest friends at Adriatic College came from that region, so perhaps in retrospect it was inevitable that I would end up working there.”

 

After graduating in 1995, Pilvi returned to Finland to study history and journalism at university, but after completing her BA in 1998 the lure of the Balkans proved irresistible and she left to pursue journalism there.

 

“But I soon realised,” she says, “that to work effectively in the region I need to learn Serbo-Croat, so I returned to Finland to study the language. I also felt that journalism, at least in the Finnish language, presented limitations in terms of trying to address the key questions of the region. So,I decided to carry on with my studies and complete a PhD. My thesis was on the use of history in Bosnia after the war, and I surveyed 1,000 fifteen year olds in Bosnia, which was fascinating.”

 

It was at this point that the idea for a UWC in the region emerged, “almost like a practical application for my thesis!” says Pilvi. Attending the European Regional Meeting of UWC National Committees in late 2000, as a representative of the Finnish National Committee, Pilvi encountered David Sutcliffe, who was looking at different approaches to the possibility of a UWC presence in the Balkans and former Soviet states – places where a UWC education seemed to be needed, but unaffordable. He invited her to lecture at Adriatic College, and after defending her thesis in 2003, Pilvi – and her family – took the decision to move to Bosnia to work on the project full-time, after several years of preparation.

 

“It was a bit like starting your own business in a foreign country,” she says. “It was incredibly hard work. In fact, it was a project not just for me but for my whole family – my husband worked remotely for his company in Finland so that he could be with me, my first son was nine months old when we moved, and my second son was born in Sarajevo while I was working on the project!

 

“By the time the College launched in September 2006, we had a team of ten people, and I had worked on recruitment, fundraising, accounting, international organisations, local politics… it was a great experience. How else would I have been able to learn so many skills in such a short time?

 

“Obviously, my interest in the Balkans stems in large part from my time at Adriatic College, but the vital thing that my time at the College provided me with was the belief that it is always possible to find ways to do meaningful things and get results if you have confidence in yourself and your sense of the world."

 

Now back home in Finland with her family, Pilvi says she has “almost by accident become one of the very few Balkan specialists in Finland,” and she intends to continue with her work on the region, both at university and as a journalist. However, she also plans to keep her opportunities open for different career and lifestyle moves.

“I have become confident that my way of working involves a combination of various factors that are important to me,” she explains. “The world in which I made my study decisions ten or fifteen years ago has changed dramatically, and I want to be open to matters that seem critical in today’s and tomorrow’s world.”