03 – 06 October 2023, Oulu, Finland
We are pleased to invite you to join us for a Week of Exchange in Oulu (Finland), to collectively engage with questions around ethics and methods in Arctic transformative research. Our gathering will take place from Tuesday, 3 October 2023 to Thursday, 5 October 2023.
To enable broad and inclusive accessibility, parts of our Week of Exchange will be held in hybrid format (more information on this will be added to the programme in the coming weeks). Limited funds are available to support travel, accommodation, visa expenses, or high costs of internet access for participants who do not have access to other funds.
How to engage
We invite researchers, community members, students, artists, activists, representatives of IROs and NGOs, and policy makers to participate.
To sign up to participate, please use this link. Please sign up before August 7, 2023. Some sessions will have limited capacity. We will inform participants registered for sessions after the registration deadline. If interest is greater than capacity and we cannot admit all participants to all sessions, we will make the selection process transparent and aim to provide alternatives.
We welcome feedback about the planning process and the workshop programme as it develops! If you would like to get involved before October, please contact Olga Lukyanova via olga.lukyanova@rifs-potsdam.de.
More Information about the programme, organisers, and sessions is available on this website.
Concept:
There is a growing interest in collaborative and co-created approaches to Arctic research. This has been accompanied by debates regarding the need to decolonize methods, research attitudes, and institutions. Increasingly, funders request that Arctic research projects include collaboration with communities. Yet, non-Indigenous researchers often do not know how to engage in a co-productive way and Indigenous knowledge continues to be misunderstood and misrepresented in research. Indigenous communities and organizations are frequently overburdened by requests to collaborate – which often come after fundamental decisions on research projects have already been made. Indigenous-led and collaborative research are also hindered by academic structures and funding processes. To avoid co-creation/co-production becoming an empty concept and collaboration being reduced to box-ticking, fundamental questions need to be addressed. These include
• How can meaningful communication and equitable research relationships be built across knowledge systems and academic disciplines?
• How does academia need to change to recognize different ways of knowing and communicating?
• How can Indigenous data sovereignty be ensured to enable just and meaningful communication?
• How can research support Indigenous language revitalization and cultural resurgence?
• What is the role of communication beyond texts and words in research?
• How can we foster collaborative and co-productive/co-creative research approaches without overburdening Indigenous communities?
• Who ultimately defines “good communication” and how can we ensure that Indigenous communities are able to evaluate if research communication is successful?
• How can Indigenous-led research be sustainably financially supported outside of academia?
The Week of Exchange encourages multi-sensory practices of learning, sharing, (re-)connecting, and communicating with humans and other-than-humans. This may be approached through handicraft, artistic performances, storytelling, movement, and silence. Participants are invited to ‘bring all their senses’ to a ‘room of exchange’ that will be open throughout the week to engage and communicate in various ways.
We are looking forward to welcoming you to Oulu in October to meet, connect, and learn from and with you! If you have any questions, suggestions, concerns, or ideas, we would like to hear from you!
Arctic Anthropology 