The theme for the 2025 Osaka Expo is 'Designing Future Society for Our Lives’, focused on saving, empowering and connecting lives. The Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam will be hosting a one-day event on the future of human wellbeing at the Dutch Pavilion in Osaka on Thursday, October 2nd.
The event will encourage a global conversation on creating a society based on wellbeing, which is an idea that connects strongly with Japan’s Society 5.0 vision–a super-smart society focusing on human wellbeing in socio-tech progress–and the Netherlands’ focus on maximising human potential through wellbeing.
The full-day event will bring together experts from various fields, policymakers, social entrepreneurs, and industry leaders to explore sustainable and scalable solutions for major global challenges. Through keynotes, pitches, interactive workshops, interactive exhibits, and a panel discussion, supported by digital tools, the event will produce valuable the basis for blueprints for new forms of collaborations and create new international partnerships.
VU Amsterdam at the Osaka World Expo 2025
Global and local sustainability challenges
The world and its population face significant global environmental sustainability challenges, including climate change, economic inequality, food and water insecurity, mass migration stress, refugee crises, plastic soup dangers, and biodiversity collapse. Moreover, we face more local challenges threatening the social sustainability of our society, such as untapped human potential, burnout, individualism, fear-based decision-making, exclusion, lack of community involvement, top-down governance, and a diminished sense of shared responsibility. For climate change, for instance, focus is mainly on reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs) through ideation and implementation of new research and technologies. The required social innovation to implement these technologies for impact is seen as an implied task, which is highly inefficient and puts unendurable burdens on already overstrained humans in our encumbered society.
The urgent need for a paradigm shift
To circumvent the unavoidable negative consequences of the above-mentioned undesired changes, we need a paradigm shift. Currently, modern society and developed economy can be called a ‘wellbeing society and economy’; a society and economy in which we strive to have (most often one-size-fits-all) solutions for all our problems with ‘wellbeing for people and planet’ as the desired end state. We often tend to forget that this perfect world needs to be broadened, built, experienced, and continuously developed by human beings, and that their wellbeing can be a starting point instead of just an end result, as well.
Wellbeing as a catalyst for transformation
Wellbeing, not just as the ultimate end state, but as an optimal starting point and catalyst can have a crucial impact on reverting the devastating consequences of critical threats. Optimal wellbeing to start with, leading to unleashing full human potential, can enable the necessary resilience for and openness to change and capacity to create solutions to circumvent increased workload, fatigue, and burnout, and by this support smoother and faster implementation of the required large-scale transitions and even more wellbeing for more people on a global scale. Sustainably building and maintaining wellbeing and unleashing human potential calls for a paradigm shift where we strive for a society based on wellbeing instead of holding on to a wellbeing society ambition approach.
VU Amsterdam @ EXPO 2025: Towards a society based on Wellbeing
To inspire the world and to facilitate the next steps to a Society based on Wellbeing, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (VU Amsterdam) organises the following day-programme at the EXPO 2025.
Preliminary programme October 2nd, 2025
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Morning programme
09:30 – 10:00 | Welcome and registration (please arrive by 09.00 for check-in)
10:00 – 10:30 | Welcome and opening remarks
- Welcome address: Building a Society Based on Wellbeing - Prof. dr. Meike Bartels, University Research Professor in Genetics and Wellbeing. Faculty of Behavioural and Movement Sciences, Biological Psychology, VU Amsterdam.
- Opening remarks: Prof. dr. Jeroen Geurts, Rector Magnificus, VU Amsterdam.
10.30 – 11.00 | Keynote by Prof. dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro, Director of the Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, part of the Department of Systems Innovation in the Graduate School of Engineering Science at Osaka University, Japan. Introduction by Bart Bossink.
11:00 – 12:30 | Pitches - interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration
- Presentations: Dutch and Japanese Perspectives on Building a Society Based on Wellbeing. Presentations will showcase a range of perspectives and research insights, setting the stage for interdisciplinary discussion and collaboration.
- Format: Each of the five presenters will deliver a short, focused pitch (approximately 5 minutes each).
- Moderator: to be announced
The moderators will guide the session, connecting the pitches into a cohesive narrative and facilitating any brief audience (Q&A).
- Prof. dr. Seiji Kumagai – Program Director JST Moonshot 9- R&D program: Realization of a mentally healthy and dynamic society by increasing peace of mind and vitality by 2050
- Walid Ibrahim, UNHRD Network Coordinator - World Food Programme, - UNHRD role in supporting the future of societies for the communities the UN serves
- Prof. dr. Bart Bossink Soci(et)al implementation and mass-customized scale-up of sustainable innovations for wellbeing – VU Amsterdam
- Jos Schut- Chief hr officer Japan & APAC Randstad - How to work on Employee Wellbeing
12.30-13.00 | Lessons learned: Recap from morning sessions
Moderator: Sem Barendse - Presenting the VU-famous Dialogue format
- Overview of topics and takeaways of the morning sessions by the moderators
- Overview of the lessons learned by the moderators
- Discussion about these lessons with the audience
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Afternoon programme
13:00 – 13:30 | Pavillion tour
13:30 – 14:00 | Lunch break: Networking opportunity with attendees and speakers
14:00 – 15:00 | Interactive exhibit and demonstration of 'A society based on wellbeing'
- Features: VR experiences, Dutch-Japanese wellbeing projects, AI in health
- Audience engagement: Polls, QR codes, global access, live Q&A and hands-on virtual reality & Artificial Intelligence in wellbeing.
Practical examples:
- Xplorit-OceansX – Xploration Coastline – A whole of society water production & distribution concept
- Yukiko Nezu - Urban Berry - three-dimensional designs that explore the relation between people, objects and space
More to be announced.
15:00 – 15:30 | Coffee break
15:30 – 16.00 | Keynote Prof. dr. Philipp Pattberg - Human Power for the Sustainable Development Goals
16:00 - 17:00 | Panel discussion on 'The future of wellbeing', moderated by Prof. dr. Bart Bossink, Science, Business and Innovation / Breakthrough Tech Innovation, VU Amsterdam
- Panelists:
- Prof. dr. Meike Bartels, Society based on Wellbeing
- Prof. dr. Jeroen Geurts, Science diplomacy and equity
- Dr. Marianne Nigra, Humanitarian sustainable innovation
- Prof. dr. Miki Sugimura, President, Sophia University, Japan and UNESCO Chair on Education for Human Dignity, Peace and Sustainability.
- Possible topics:
- How to get to a society based on wellbeing
- Public-private stakeholders to be involved in this endeavor
- Format: Each panel will feature experts, with real-time feedback through Q&A, polls, and audience interaction.
- Outcomes: Panelists will outline potential policy recommendations and collaborations to address pressing issues.
17:00 – 17:20 | Closing keynote by Prof. dr. Jeroen Geurts: Whole-of-society bridges for a society based on wellbeing via science equity and science diplomacy
17:20 – 17:30 | Closing remarks by Prof. dr. Meike Bartels: Summary and reflection on the day's insights and outlining future collaborative steps
17:30 – 18:00 | Break
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Networking reception
18:00 – 19:30 | Networking reception (food will be served): Opportunity to engage with researchers, industry experts, and policymakers from the Netherlands and Japan for collaboration in health and wellbeing initiatives and next steps.
Profiles of speakers from VU Amsterdam
Organising committee
This event has been made possible by several colleagues from the International Relations Office and the University Library of VU Amsterdam.
Gagan Kaur
Project Leader for South and East Asia, VU-Japan Coordinator and VU-USRN coordinator
Maya Allister
Project Leader
Contact information
If you have any questions or suggestions about this initiative, please reach out to the organising committee.