WG 21: Transdisciplinary Research in a Changing Arctic: Geopolitics, Knowledge and Decolonial Practice

Coordinators:
Sabaheta Ramcilovic-Suominen (LUKE: Natural Resources Institute Finland)
Þorbjörn Kristjánsson (University of Iceland) 

Description: 
The Arctic is increasingly positioned as a strategic geopolitical frontier shaped by climate change, resource extraction, security concerns and renewed international competition. In parallel, research in the region is undergoing its own transformation. As part of a wider decolonial turn, Arctic Indigenous peoples and local communities are challenging extractive research practices and demanding greater influence over the terms and conditions under which research is conducted, and knowledge produced, interpreted and used.

This Working Group explores how these geopolitical and epistemic shifts reshape transdisciplinary research in the Arctic, while also mutually constituting one another in the region’s specific postcolonial context. It asks the wider question of how securitisation, resource and knowledge sovereignty, green transitions and changing relations between Arctic states affect research collaboration and knowledge politics.

We are particularly interested in tensions that emerge when research works at the intersection of Indigenous, local and scientific knowledges while operating within institutional structures characterised by short-term funding, predefined funding calls and project objectives, international consortia, financial and epistemic competition, and policy-driven expectations.

We invite contributions asking questions such as: How do historical and contemporary neo-/post-colonial relations shape who has authority to conduct research, define questions, mediate access to communities and interpret knowledge? When does necessary protection against extractive research turn into exclusionary gatekeeping and at what/whose costs? How are authority, responsibility, resources and research labour negotiated between Indigenous institutions, local actors and external research organisations? How may legitimate decolonial claims, grounded in enduring inequalities and limited institutional capacities, become strategically mobilised to advance organisational and/or individual agendas, interests and hierarchies?

The session welcomes empirical and critical, conceptual and methodological reflections on how decolonisation and co-creation are negotiated within the Arctic’s neo-/post-colonial settings and amid renewed geopolitical and strategic leverage attached to the region. We also welcome work examining alternative research practices that redistribute authority, strengthen Indigenous and local agency, and create more reciprocal, locally responsive, valued and accountable forms of knowledge cocreation.

Type of call:
Call for Abstracts/Papers. The session will consist of paper presentations followed by a roundtable discussion among  presenters and invited commentators. A short open discussion with the audience will conclude the session.

Format:
Paper presentations followed by discussion.

Participation mode:
Onsite, with the possibility of hybrid participation upon request.

Submission details:

Full papers are desirable but not required. Selected authors will be invited to circulate short discussion papers (4–6 pages) before the conference to facilitate in-depth debate.

Contacts:
Sabaheta Ramcilovic-Suominen, sabaheta.ramcilovik-suominen@luke.fi
Þorbjörn Kristjánsson, thorbjorn@hi.is