Job for Anthropology lecturer, Oulu

Posted on October 5, 2017 by

If many of our colleagues send their application to this job offer, we may be able to get another Arctic anthropologist to our team. Please consider, it’s a great and rare opportunity.

https://rekry.saima.fi/certiahome/open_job_view.html?did=5600&jc=1&id=00004362&lang=en

The Faculty of Humanities of the University of Oulu publishes an open position of university lecturer in cultural anthropology as of 1 August 2018

Research at the Faculty of Humanities focuses on the theme of Understanding humans in change. The applicant’s research interests should coincide with this theme. In the past few years, the research activities of cultural anthropology have focused on the following themes: environmental anthropology (such as mining and climate change, particularly in northern and Arctic areas), political anthropology (such as environmental conflicts, epistemic struggles, and colonialism), multispecies ethnography (such as human-animal relations) and ethnohistory (especially histories of the Indigenous peoples of North America and the Saamis). In addition to the themes listed above, the program of cultural anthropology is interested in promoting its teaching and research in linguistic anthropology, medical anthropology and anthropology of technology, but experts in other subfields are also encouraged to apply.

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People, Places and Change

Posted on September 29, 2017 by

Exhibition – Research in the Arctic
Dr. Anna Stammler-Gossmann, Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, Finland

October 3 –19, 2017. Kopio Gallery, Faculty of Art and Design, University of Lapland

Exhibition Launch: Monday, October 2, 2017, 18:00

This poster exhibition is based on the materials collected during the anthropological fieldwork in the coastal areas of the Northern Norway and Russia. It represents the relationship of coastal inhabitants with and around seawater, and their ways of perceiving and experiencing changes in the coastal life.

Layout and film editing: Anna Maria Gossmann,International School of Design, Technical University of Cologne, Germany

Arctic Centre in cooperation with the Faculty of Art and Design (University of Lapland)

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Women as guardians of Human Security in the Arctic?

Posted on September 13, 2017 by

11 September, talking about Human Security. Is that by coincidence or a slight hint at the terrible events in New York in 2001? It was not quite a usual group of people for a scholarly conference who had gathered in Helsinki in the Foreign Affairs Institute to explore security beyond armies, military and sovereignty questions. I was told that there will be people from governments, embassies and the like.

Yuranebe_khada_gender_security_hearth

Yuranebe Khada, Nenets guardian of a hearth on the Yamal Pensinula. She is the source of human security for the people who live on Gazprom’s largest terrestrial gas deposit (Foto Stammler)

When preparing the talk, I realised that the main argument that I thought was lacking from the point of view of an anthropologist on human security in the Arctic, is that humans feel secure there if they have a sense of home, of belonging, and of emotional-spiritual warmth and stability at their place. This fundamental condition of  human security is quite well epitomised by the symbol of the hearth, the fireplace in the middle of a nomadic tent, tended physically by the housewife, and spiritually guarded by the myad pukhutse, which is the Nenets word for the spirit that guards the tent and the hearth in it. Now notice: both of these figures, the housewife and the the guardian spirit are female. This means that the main guarantors of human security as a general condition in the Arctic are women! In all the male politician talk, or military talk, or industrialisation talk, or adventure talk, or reindeer herding talk – this fundamental condition about gender is not enough emphasized. This was my argument in the talk in Helsinki to these ambassadors. Of course, as everything, this is not new. The volume edited in 2010 by Thomas Hylland Eriksen emphasized already that we need to consider more immaterial notions of human security

After the talk I was a bit surprised to have seen, among others,  the ambassadors of countries that might have a bit different view on gender in the audience: Iran and Morocco 🙂 . To be honest, I was a bit surprised myself seeing myself talking like this about gender – considering that I am not at all a specialist in this field, and have never published on it. But it’s never too late…

At least there was no open outbreak of opposition in the audience, rather slight shaking of heads when they were listening to that argument.

If you are interested, you can listen to talks on that seminar here in the podcast, and comments are welcome of course!

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Siberia Geography Postdoc wanted

Posted on August 13, 2017 by

Our colleagues in Vienna have this interesting job opening in a project that combines anthropology and GIS in the area of the East Siberian railway region (BAM, AYAM). Interested?

Train&road_Berkakit

fuel train going North on the railway AYAM near Berkakit, March 2017 (photo Stammler)

then read on

Continue reading →

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Language contacts in the Arctic

Posted on August 5, 2017 by

August 31 is the deadline for paper submissions to a congress in Moscow. Judging from the keynote speakers, this should be also very interesting for us anthropologists, because it’s not only about hard core linguistic studies, but very much about the cultural context in which speakers of different languages get into contact. Have a look

Language contact in the circumpolar world

Institute of Linguistics RAS, Moscow, Russia; 27-29 October 2017

Extension of deadline to August 31

The circumpolar world includes the Arctic as defined by AMAP (Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Program) with adjacent areas. This vast territory has a number of common features that set it apart from any other part of the world: extremely harsh climate conditions, low population density, large distances between speakers of different languages or even of the same language, seasonal migrations for hundreds of miles, prevalence of hunter-gatherers with absolutely no traditional farming, etc. While language contact has been a popular topic of linguistic research in the last couple of decades, there have been few studies that would concentrate on the circumpolar region and specifics of language contact in the area.
The ‘Language contact in the circumpolar world’ conference will bring together researchers studying language contact in the North, and discussions of any aspect of the topic are welcome. Of particular importance is the question of whether language contact in the circumpolar world is different from that of other areas, and if so, in which particular respects.
The conference will feature papers selected by the Organizing committee, invited lectures by leading international experts specializing in the topic, and two extended tutorials on particular parts of the circumpolar world, ‘Language Contact in Arctic Canada & Greenland’ by Michael Fortesque (University of Copenhagen) and ‘Language Contact in Arctic Europe’ by Jussi Ylikoski (The Arctic University of Norway & University of Oulu).
We welcome abstracts from colleagues working on a variety of topics pertaining to language contact in the circumpolar region that include but are not limited to:

  •           language change conditioned by language contact,
  •           mixed languages,
  •           linguistic areas or Sprachbund’s,
  •           reconstructing the past through linguistic data,
  •           patterns of traditional or modern multilingualism,
  •           sociolinguistic details of modern or historic language contact,
  •           northern varieties of larger languages that are not restricted to the region (e.g. dialects of Russian, Swedish, English, etc.),
  •           cartography of language contact areas,
  •           methodology of language contact studies which takes into account specific features of the region.

The conference is organized by a new research group on Language Contact in the Circumpolar World at the Institute of Linguistics, supported by the Russian Science Foundation, see http://iling-ran.ru/main/departments/typol_compar/circumpolar/eng for more details.

Confirmed plenary speakers:
Michael Fortescue (University of Copenhagen)
Lenore Grenoble (University of Chicago)
Brigitte Pakendorf (CNRS, Lyon)
Nikolai Vakhtin (European University of St. Petersburg)
Jussi Ylikoski (The Arctic University of Norway & University of Oulu)

Organizing committee:
Olesya Khanina & Andrej Kibrik (Chairs), Maria Amelina, Mira Bergelson, Valentin Gusev, Olga Kazakevich, Elena Klyachko, Yuri Koryakov, and Natalia Stoynova.

The conference will be held in English. Organizers will assist participants in finding accommodation in the vicinity of the conference location.

The extended deadline for abstract submission is August 31, 2017. Notifications of acceptance or non-acceptance will be sent via email soon after that date. Please submit an anonymous abstract of no more than 1 page (excluding references) by email to circumpolar.conference2017(at)gmail.com; include a title, authors, and affiliations in your email

 

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Job offer: sustainability Professor

Posted on July 1, 2017 by

Hope everybody is enjoying the summer. For those who prefer to read announcements at this time, here is an interesting one. Hopefully many of ‘our people’ apply, so maybe we get another great cooperation partner for our team into the University of Helsinki?

The Faculty of Arts, University of Helsinki invites applications for the position of

ASSISTANT PROFESSOR / ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR / PROFESSOR OF SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE (INDIGENOUS SUSTAINABILITIES)

The appointee will work in the HELSUS interdisciplinary research programmes and teach in HELSUS associated master’s and doctoral programmes.

The successful applicant may be appointed to a professorship or a fixed-term associate/assistant professorship (tenure track system), depending on his or her qualifications and career stage.

The appointee shall have scholarly interest in indigenous sustainabilities through one or more of the following frameworks: human-environment relations, traditional environmental knowledge, gender, law, politics, indigenous governance, indigenous health and wellbeing, indigenous ontologies, indigenous activism and indigenous movements. Experience in working with indigenous communities, familiarity with indigenous or decolonizing methodologies and some knowledge of at least one indigenous language is considered an asset.

The assistant professor / associate professor / professor shall hold a doctoral degree and be able to conduct top-level international research related to indigenous sustainabilities, provide teaching based on such research in interdisciplinary contexts, and supervise Master theses and doctoral dissertations. He/she is expected to also participate in doctoral training and the development of teaching, as well as to be able to acquire research funding.

Please find more:

https://www.helsinki.fi/en/open-positions/assistant-professor-associate-professor-professor-of-sustainability-science-indigenous-sustainabilities

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Researching along in the Arctic: from lecture rooms to research fieldwork sites. A workshop on research issues with Tim Ingold

Posted on March 22, 2017 by

On 23 March 2017, The Anthropology Research Team is happy to invite Professor Tim Ingold to participate as a guest discussant to a workshop that will be held at the Arctic Centre, in the Thule Room, from 12:30-14:00. The workshop shall give the possibility to all those who have attended Professor Ingold’s lectures at the University of Lapland, last week, and who are doing research in the Arctic and with Arctic related issues, to briefly introduce their current research topic (3 minutes) and pose some questions. Professor Ingold shall make some comments on the most relevant issues and we shall then turn it in a discussion on those issues that have most resonance with our current research questions. Contact: Nuccio Mazzullo

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