part a – description of the collaborative research project...

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Title: Arctic Encounters: Contemporary Travel/Writing in the European High North

Acronym: ENCARC

Project Leader: Prof.University of LeedsUK

Principal Investigators:

Dr.Leeds Metropolitan UniversityUK

Dr.University of RoskildeDenmark

Dr.University of IcelandIceland

Dr.University of TromsøNorway

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PART A – Description of the Collaborative Research Project (CRP)

A1: Concept and objectives of the CRP

Managed from the UK and involving academic partners from Denmark, Iceland and Norway as well as a large number (4) of associated partners, this groundbreaking collaborative project looks at the increasingly important role of cultural tourism in fashioning twenty-first-century understandings of the European Arctic. Broadly synonymous with the High North, this area–– which has proved notoriously difficult to define––incorporates some of Europe’s most geographically extreme regions, stretching from upper Fennoscandia (Finland, Norway, Russia, Sweden) to Greenland and Iceland in the Atlantic Northwest.

The project’s general objective is to account for the social and environmental complexities of the region as these are seen in the mutual relationship between a wide range of recent travel practices and equally diverse representations of those practices framed in both verbal and visual terms (e.g. travel writing and documentary film). Particular attention is given to the recent consolidation of environmentally oriented forms of travel (ecotourism, ‘green’ travel writing) in a region that, though not as inaccessible as it is sometimes imagined to be, has opened up considerably over the last couple of decades. Improved infrastructure and transportation networks, as well as the local effects of climate change, have made the European Arctic more accessible than ever, and tourism––especially nature tourism and aboriginal tourism––is flourishing across the region, though disagreements continue as to the sustainability, degree of local management and advantage, and medium- to long-term impact of tourism practice as a whole (Lück, Maher and Stewart 2010).

Arctic travel writing, too, seems to be undergoing something of a renaissance, with numerous ‘green’ travelogues adding themselves to the growing number of representations of a region often seen as being at accelerated risk of social and ecological collapse (Beck 2009). Folding together tourism and travel writing as travel/writing––as linked forms of travel practice––this project explores discrepancies between the needs of the environment, indigenous and non- indigenous inhabitants, and tourists to the region within the overarching context of an increasingly interconnected but incompletely decolonised world (Huggan 2009). The more specific research questions it seeks to address include the following:

To what extent has the European Arctic, along with the various representational discourses that constitute it, kept pace with changing social, cultural and environmental imperatives, and can tourism practices be seen as a barometer for this?

What are the cultural implications of conflicting interests in Arctic tourism development and their representation in travel writing and other cultural texts?

How might we think beyond the largely separate approaches taken by the region’s national-priority-driven tourism industries, and how do the transnational affiliations between the Arctic’s indigenous peoples complicate both separate national interests and a potential common regional approach?

Do tourism and its representations offer the possibility of working towards a re- imagination of the region that counteracts exploitative colonial and commercial designs upon it, and of seeing it as a planetary (cosmopolitan) and/or postcolonial (autonomous) space?

As explained in more detail below (see A2 and A3), the project is innovative in several defining ways. First, it seeks to broaden the parameters of the European Arctic by combining methodological and disciplinary approaches to it (literary/cultural studies, tourism studies, environmental studies, anthropology) that until now have largely been treated as separate. Second, tourism and travel writing are conjoined, which is surprisingly rare despite the obvious equivalences between them. Third, the project uses the idea of the Arctic to reflect on

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the idea of Europe and vice versa. And fourth, it is one of few attempts to date to see the European Arctic as a postcolonial space.

A2: Research context and progress beyond the state-of-the-art

While there is nothing new about the current scramble for the Arctic, its stakes have never been higher. Recent evidence suggests that the Arctic holds more than 10% of the world’s undiscovered oil and as much as 30% of the world’s undiscovered gas reserves. At the same time, melting of the Arctic ice, which reached a peak in 2012, is taken as an indicator of global climate effects. In economic as well as geopolitical terms, the Arctic, far from being the frozen waste on the fringes of the planet it is often still romantically imagined to be, is very much at the centre of an increasingly globalised world (Emmerson 2010; Heininen and Southcott 2010).

The Arctic is also central to European concerns, even if the region’s geographical boundaries, themselves contestable, test the limits of Europe as both collective idea and bounded territory. This project rejects the romantic view of the Arctic as a wilderness zone, marginal to the cultural and political concerns of Europe. It equally contests the colonialist view that the Arctic is first and foremost an economic resource for the powers, both European and not, that have historically exploited it and that continue to do so to this day (e.g. by availing themselves of the new commercial opportunities opened up by global warming: see Sale and Potapov 2010). Instead, it insists on seeing the Arctic as part of Europe––culturally, politically, economically––but with the self-given right to create and consolidate its own regional identity, to capitalise on its own resources, and (like any other regional form of European self-government) to manage its own affairs.

Arctic research has become a priority for Europe over the last decade or so in tandem with the development of EU Arctic policy, arranged to date around the twin axes of sustainability and security (Konyshev and Sergunin 2012). Such policy reflects mounting concerns over the environment; it registers political tensions over the economic possibilities provided by resource extraction and new shipping routes; and it is alert to the need to measure what is actually happening in the Arctic, e.g. by providing cooperative transnational frameworks for scientific investigation into the local, regional and global effects of Arctic climate change. While most recent EU funding has gone into ‘hard’ scientific projects, the social sciences have also played a role, e.g. in the cluster of projects (ACCESS) currently looking at the impact of human activities on Arctic ecosystems, or in the first major circumpolar initiative to include extensive humanities research, BOREAS: ‘Histories from the North’ (2006-2010).

While tourism plays its part in both of these projects, the approach adopted has been largely empirical, relying on statistical and ethnographic methods. Such an approach is typical for tourism research in general and for Arctic tourism research in particular, both of which have historically sought empirical foundations for their own theoretical discourse. The emphasis has been on patterns of tourist demand and behaviour, on industry demographics, and on the quantifiable impacts of tourism on environment and cultural heritage; while the general acceptance has been that ‘economic development is the driving force behind tourism in the North’ (Stewart, Draper and Johnston 2005: 387). Arctic tourism research has certainly looked as well at broader cultural issues, especially those associated with aboriginal tourism and ecotourism, but––with some notable exceptions (e.g. Birkeland 2005; Knudsen and Waade 2010)––the study of cultural representations of tourism has arguably been kept separate from the study of the practical effects and consequences of tourism itself.

This project aims to close the gap between social-scientific and humanities-oriented approaches to Arctic tourism, in part by bringing tourism into dialogue with travel writing. While there are several recent books on literary/cultural perceptions of the Arctic, most of these concentrate on exploration literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There

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has been little sustained analysis to date of other verbal (or visual) forms of travel narrative, and still less treatment of the interface between tourism and travel, the mystified distinction between which has long provided rhetorical ammunition for travel writers, whose studied reluctance to see themselves as tourists has served as a foundation myth for modern travel writing (Holland and Huggan 1998). More recent work, both by critics and by travel writers themselves, has reconfirmed the reliance of travel writers on the tourist industries they sometimes affect to disdain; but it has also shown the supplementary or even anticipatory work of travel writers in pointing to structural changes in these industries, as well as in performing a kind of surrogate ethnography in which staged cultural encounters between ‘tourists’ and ‘natives’––false dichotomies notwithstanding (Bruner 2004)––are creatively explored. Definitions of travel writing have expanded in the process to include other kinds of travel practice––both voluntary and coerced, both occasional and repeated––while representations of travel open out onto the real and imaginative possibilities of ‘travelling cultures’ at large (Clifford 1997).

This project sees travel writing, accordingly, as working symbiotically with tourism rather than, as is often presumed to be the case, being positioned antithetically against it, and looks to analyse both forms of travel practice in the light of mounting anxieties about the sustainability of Arctic ecologies and the ambivalent role––potentially beneficial, but also demonstrably destructive––played by Arctic tourism itself. This approach emphasises that, at least in part, the ‘Arctic’ is an intertextual construction, a tissue of frequently romanticised representations. Travel writing, in this last sense, reveals the powerfully colonising force of western romantic imaginaries of the Arctic. These continue to surface today across a variety of popular forms: in conventional Arctic ‘brochure discourse’ (Carrigan 2011); in the evergreen genre of Arctic exploration narrative; and in the varying strains of environmental apocalypticism that tend to accompany catastrophist accounts of (High) Arctic decay and Arctic-centred responses to global warming––all of which might be seen as having spawned a new ‘green romantic’ vocabulary of the Arctic that is in many ways just as mythical and ethnocentric as the earlier vocabularies it never fully replaced. Representations such as these indicate what Ryall, Schimanski and Waerp call a self-perpetuating ‘Arcticism’ in line with Edward Said’s concept of Orientalism (2010: x). Within this ‘Arcticism’, Ryall et al. argue, ‘images of the natural or indigenous other are reproduced and naturalised’, while Arcticism also evolves into ‘a strategy of [displaced romantic] self-imagining … for example as explorer-hero, scientific worker, or white, imperial male’ (2010: x).

Arcticism highlights the colonialism, explicit or implicit, of Arctic travel writing. Decolonising the Arctic, in this context, is about practising vigilance towards stereotyped visions and versions of the region that have been disseminated through the ages by people, some of whom have never been anywhere near there, but have read about it in books that conceive of it in grandiose terms––sanctified, liminal, agonistic––that probably make little sense to those different peoples that make the Arctic their home. At the same time, decolonising the Arctic is also about giving voice to those who live in the Arctic––and about empowering those voices. In broader terms, this project seeks to make the case for a ‘postcolonial Arctic’ in which locally articulated desires to decolonise the region are seen in ecological as well as cultural-political terms. While the Arctic has long been recognised as a colonial space (Brody 1976; Petersen 1995), postcolonial theories and methods have yet to be applied in any systematic way to the European High North (for rare exceptions, see Poddar, Patke and Jensen 2008; Jensen and Loftsdóttir 2012). To some extent, to describe the region as ‘colonial’ is dangerous in so far as the pre-emptive designation of the Arctic as colonial (or marginal) risks instantiating the very colonialism (or marginalisation) it invokes. Still, it is clear that Arctic peoples, both indigenous and not, are entangled in complex histories of colonialism in the region; and that tourism is similarly caught up in these histories, even perpetuating them to some extent.

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This project thus comes equipped with a set of caveats around tourism, still often seen as a modern-day form of imperialism (Nash 1977), or as one of the primary ordering effects of a global modernity created and consolidated in hierarchical terms (Franklin 2004). However, it seems necessary to remember that, despite widespread critique of tourism development in the Arctic, it is still seen, not least by many Arctic peoples themselves, as an urgent economic solution at a time when several other industries in the region have gone into sharp decline. The Norwegian government, for instance, has recently invested heavily in tourism development in its Arctic and sub-Arctic regions (Hall, Müller and Saarinen 2009). While new tourism developments have been the cause of considerable tension between Sámi and Norwegian populations, they have also opened up an opportunity for dialogue. One prevalent view is that tourism has reinforced neo-colonial relations in the High North; but another is that the various players involved can become agents in a new kind of shared belonging (Pettersson 2009). This project remains open to both views. Most of all, though, it takes the view that, whatever else it might mean, the ‘postcolonial Arctic’ is a critical attempt–– internationalist in spirit, interdisciplinary in method––to come to terms with a region which, long since co-opted into the unfinished history of global modernity, must belatedly be given the opportunity to negotiate that modernity in its own terms.

A3: Research design and methodology

Methodologically, the project is defined by a broad-based cultural studies approach that combines discursive (e.g. literary-critical) and empirical (e.g. ethnographic) elements, and that brings together research from at least three cross-disciplinary fields (tourism studies; postcolonial studies; environmental studies). These methods are consistent with the project’s overall aim to show the value of a humanities (culturally oriented) rather than social sciences (economically driven) approach to tourism in the European Arctic.

The project does not make the mistake of seeing the Arctic as a homogeneous region; rather, its integrated sub-projects look to provide transverse links that show as many conflicts as commonalities within what has always been a sharply differentiated area, while at least some of these fissures––linked in part to the complex status of the Arctic’s different, often transnationally affiliated indigenous peoples––are also evident within European Arctic territories as part of contested national space. This constitutive tension between sameness and difference is reflected in the research design of the project. Building on established partnerships, the project encompasses a mixed team of eleven researchers working across five sites (University of Leeds, Leeds Metropolitan University, University of Roskilde, University of Iceland, University of Tromsø). The team––which is carefully balanced in terms of nationality, gender, academic experience and disciplinary interest––will work on two major collaborative sub-projects, each with a distinctly transnational emphasis, thereby profiting from the complementary skills of researchers located in different parts of northern Europe (see also B1 below).

The first project (WP1) will consist of a culturally informed approach to ‘green’ travel/writing in the European Arctic, while the second (WP2) will undertake a historically informed consideration of the region as a postcolonial space. A UK-based postdoctoral fellow will help the project leader oversee and coordinate these sub-projects. The project is completed by three nationally oriented sub-projects: two doctoral and one postdoctoral (WP3, WP4 and WP5, respectively).

The first doctoral sub-project (WP3), while based in Denmark (University of Roskilde), has a Greenlandic emphasis. It will analyse recent encounters between indigenous and non- indigenous peoples in the linked contexts of developing ecotourism in Greenland, changing patterns of Danish colonialism in the Home Rule era, and the simultaneous threats and opportunities presented by Arctic climate change. The second doctoral sub-project (WP4), based at the University of Iceland, will look at the cultural as well as ecological effects of

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contemporary wilderness tourism in Iceland, gauging these against changing perceptions of the national interest. The third, postdoctoral sub-project (WP5), based at the University of Tromsø (Norway), will examine recent patterns of tourism development in northern Norway from postcolonial and ecocritical perspectives, focusing on the socio-cultural frictions that arise between different local and national interest groups.

In each case, the study of tourism will combine symbolic (representational) and material practices, which is one of the original features of the project (see A1 and A2 above). Each of these sub-projects will then feed into the two larger projects, which are affiliated with two of Europe’s leading specialist research units: the Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies (University of Leeds), and the School of Events, Tourism and Hospitality (Leeds Metropolitan University). The project’s integrated research design is reflected, in turn, in the three major events associated with it:

A 2-day international postgraduate conference on the ‘Postcolonial Arctic’ (c.20-30 delegates), at the University of Leeds (March 2014);

A 3-day international conference, ‘New Narratives of the Arctic’ (c.40-60 delegates), at the University of Roskilde (January 2015);

A touring exhibition, ‘Arctic Encounters: Centring Europe’s Northern Edges’, led by a Kirkenes-based Sámi curator and with contributory funding from the Arts Council of Norway, the Barents Secretariat, and the Funding Council of Lapland (May 2016).

The project’s associated partners––the Finland-based environmental cooperative Snowchange, the Leeds International Film Festival, the Icelandic Tourist Board, and the Norway-based indigenous collective Verddevuohta (see also C4 below)––will be fully involved in the organisation and implementation of these events. The events will simultaneously be used as opportunities for annual team review meetings and as milestones for the project’s, and its coordinated sub-projects’, preliminary (Year 1), interim (Year 2), and final (Year 3) discoveries and results (see A4 below). Details on the five interrelated work packages are as follows:

WP1: Green Ice: Contemporary Travel/Writing, Environmentalism and the Arctic

Objectives1. To consider how contemporary Arctic travel writing intersects with new travel practices, especially ecotourism, in the European Arctic2. To critically assess the representation of cultural encounters in European Arctic travel/writing3. To situate these changing representations in the context of the language and identity politics of the region

DescriptionThis team project, involving researchers at all levels from the CRP’s partner countries, will look at ‘green’ forms of travel/writing in a contemporary European Arctic context. Adopting a broad-based cultural studies approach, it will compare perspectives on the changing political ecology of a fragile region shaped by climatic and cultural factors. In exploring the mutual relations between new developments in Arctic travel narratives and tourism practices, the project will pay particular attention to the changing discourses that produce, and are in turn produced by, encounters between contemporary Arctic peoples and territories as well as by recent social and cultural interactions between these peoples and tourists to the region. Questions of indigeneity, gender and nationality will be considered; the project will also compare English-language texts with those written in other languages, thereby examining the politics of language and its significant role in tourism. Finally, attention will be given to the changing symbolic value of Arctic discourses in environmental movements in order to

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WP2: The Postcolonial Arctic

Objectives1.To establish the case for a ‘postcolonial Arctic’ in terms of both the colonial past and colonial present of the region2. To consider to what extent colonialism in the Arctic, both past and present, can be seen in ecological terms3. To ask whether indigenous perspectives on the Arctic have the capacity to effect an imaginative reclamation of the region in ways that support cultural and political autonomy and/or look forward to a more ‘planetary’ vision of the Arctic in times to come

DescriptionLike WP1, WP2 is a team project involving researchers at all levels from the CRP’s partner countries. The research will draw on and combine disciplinary perspectives from history, geography, anthropology, political science and environmental studies, as well as literary and visual studies, in order to look at the continuing colonisation of the Arctic in symbolic (representational) and material (commercial) terms. It will focus on recent verbal and visual representations of the European Arctic, not least in the context of climate change and other localised manifestations of global risk society; however, it will put these with a wider historical frame to make the case for a ‘postcolonial Arctic’ in which locally articulated desires to decolonise the region are seen in both ecological and cultural-political terms. The project will see the current scramble for the Arctic in terms of a centuries-long pursuit of material wealth and political purchase in the region that has hardly diminished for the various colonial and commercial powers concerned (Craciun 2009). The Arctic might thus be described as having a colonial past, but also a colonial present, and the project operates with this double understanding of the postcolonial: as both a painful negotiation of the legacies of earlier eras and a reckoning––in many ways equally damaging––with those new forms of colonialism and imperialism that have surfaced in today’s globalised world. But it also operates with a third, more hopeful understanding of the postcolonial: as setting up the parameters for both imaginative and material transformation so as to support cultural and political autonomy, but also to create the conditions for a more ‘planetary’ (cosmopolitan, socially and ecologically balanced) vision of the world.

Dissemination and impactAs with WP1, the research from WP2 will be incorporated into a short co-written e-book, to be published by Palgrave Pivot. Selected pre-publication research findings will be adapted for media purposes, also tying in with the project’s main events.

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Dissemination and impactThe research will be incorporated into a short co-written e-book of around 60,000 words. The book will be published in Palgrave Pivot, a new digital series designed to deliver new, medium-length research quickly to a variety of both academic and non-academic constituencies. Selected pre-publication research findings will be adapted for media purposes,e.g. interviews, short articles and reports.

consider the close connections between global forms of environmentalist discourse and action and local cultural response.

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WP3: ‘Greening’ Greenland: Contemporary Travel/Writing and Environmentalism

Objectives1. To consider how recent travel writing on Greenland in English and other languages intersects with other forms of travel practice, especially ecotourism, in the Arctic2. To examine the diverse forms of cultural encounter associated with this writing3. To consider the environmentalist implications of such writing, particularly as these are inflected by current global discourses of climate change

DescriptionThis doctoral sub-project will consist of a PhD thesis of around 80,000 words, to be co- supervised by and at the University of Roskilde (see B1 below). The development of cruise-ship tourism has recently opened up Greenland to tourism on a modest if unprecedented scale. This has coincided with the rise of ecotourism, with the global awareness of climate change––often popularly associated with Greenland’s receding glaciers––and with the country’s gradual transition from the status of a Danish county, via Home Rule, to self-government. All of this creates the opportunity to develop a tourist industry that is based on sustainability and reflects a growing Greenlandic self-assertiveness. Through the lens of recent travel writing on Greenland, the project will look at the dynamic interchange between ecotourism, the science of global warming, and the political landscape of Greenlandic nation-building. It will also show how the cultural encounters examined in such writing both reflect back on an earlier archive of colonial travel narrative and engage with new, postcolonial forms of cultural interaction and response.

Dissemination and impactThe research will be published in the University of Leiden’s ‘Arctic Identities’ series. It will be the first full-length study of travel writing in relation to Greenlandic tourism, environmentalism and cultural change.

WP4: Between ‘Europe’ and the ‘Arctic’: Iceland as a Gateway Destination

Objectives1. To explore the socio-cultural, geopolitical and environmental implications of a burgeoning interest in Iceland as a wilderness tourist destination2. To examine how Iceland has been historically imagined and embodied as a gateway destination situated between ‘Europe’ and the ‘Arctic’3. To analyse how recent travel writing on Iceland intersects with, but also differs from, other contemporary travel narratives marketed as being on the ‘European Arctic’

DescriptionThis doctoral sub-project will consist of a PhD thesis of around 80,000 words, to be co- supervised by and at the University of Iceland (see B1 below). Tourism has grown exponentially in Iceland since the economic crisis of 2008. Some see tourism–– particularly nature tourism––as a solution to the crisis, but concerns remain about sustainability. The project will focus on Iceland as a gateway destination situated between ‘Europe’ and the ‘Arctic’, with each of these destinations being seen in an imaginary and ideological as well as a physical sense. It will analyse what is unique to the Icelandic case, but also draw similarities with other marketed ‘European Arctic’ destinations. As such, it will question the current positionality of Iceland as belonging simultaneously to ‘Europe’ and the ‘Arctic’ while also critically examining the historical role Icelandic travel/writing has played in contributing to the national cause. Particular attention will be given to the ways in which contemporary Icelandic travel/writing frames cultural encounters in which nature and society

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WP5: Visualising autonomy in sub-Arctic coastal tourism: a case study from northern Norway

Objectives1. To examine how practices of coastal tourism are envisioned and enacted in northern Norway (Lofoten)2. To ask to what extent these practices serve local economic and political needs, and whether there is currently a re-imagining ‘on the ground’ that counters neo-colonial trends in tourism development in the region3. To explore ways of representing these practices visually, especially through video and photography, in order to promote local autonomy and its sustainable management

DescriptionNorthern Norway has a long history of being a centre for resource extraction but a political periphery. In the face of global economic restructuring, tourism has been identified as a major development opportunity that the region should exploit. This postdoctoral sub-project, based at the University of Tromsø, will focus on coastal tourism and its implications for local autonomy. It will incorporate two periods of ethnographic fieldwork, to be carried out at Røst (pop. 600) at the southern tip of the Lofoten archipelagos, the most popular tourist destination in the North. Lofoten is the locus of an ongoing ‘battle of the North’ in which national economic imperatives, particularly those organised around petroleum extraction, are pitted against local desires to maintain close interdependencies between nature, people and society––desires also represented in local-community efforts to get Lofoten on the UNESCO world heritage list as a ‘mixed’ (natural/cultural) site. Integrating tourism with local small-scale activities, e.g. those related to coastal fishing, is both a challenge and an objective. An important part of the sub-project will be the representation of this challenge in visual terms, especially photography and video installation.

Dissemination and impactThe research will be turned into (1) a circa 50,000-word field report and (2) an interactive audiovisual log, to be incorporated into the main project exhibition.

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Dissemination and impactThe research will be published by the University of Iceland, and also disseminated in shorter articles and reports suitable for a general readership. Some of these shorter pieces will be co- authored by the supervisors.

mirror one another within national and transnational contexts. The project’s theoretical basis is interdisciplinary, combining anthropology, history, political science, literary/cultural studies and tourism studies. Methods will include ethnographic fieldwork (especially in relation to wilderness tourism in northern Iceland), the analysis of travel narratives and historical documents, and interviews with selected individuals and focus groups (government officials, travel writers, tourists).

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A4: Workplan with Milestones

The following Gantt chart represents the breakdown of the work and the major project milestones as described in the Work Package text.

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A5: Bibliography

Beck, Ulrich (2009) World at Risk, Cambridge: Polity Press.Birkeland, Inger (2005) Making Place, Making Self: Travel Subjectivity and Sexual Difference, Aldershot: Ashgate.Brody, Hugh (1976) ‘Colonialism in the Arctic’, History Workshop 1.1: 245-253.Bruner, Edward (2004) Culture on Tour: Ethnographies of Travel, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Carrigan, Anthony (2011) Postcolonial Tourism: Literature, Culture, Environment, London: Routledge.Clifford, James (1997) Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Craciun, Adriana (2009) ‘The Scramble for the Arctic’, Interventions 11.1: 103-114. Emmerson, Charles (2010) The Future History of the Arctic, London: The Bodley Head. Franklin, A. (2004) ‘“Tourism as an ordering”: towards a new ontology of tourism’, Tourist Studies 4.3: 277-301.Hall, C. Michael, K. Müller and Jarkko Saarinen (eds.) (2009) Nordic Tourism: Issues and Cases, Bristol: Channel View Publications.Heininen, Lassi and Chris Southcott (eds.) (2010) Globalization and the Circumpolar North, Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Holland, Patrick and Graham Huggan (1998) Tourists with Typewriters: Critical Reflections on Contemporary Travel Writing, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Huggan, Graham (2009) Extreme Pursuits: Travel/Writing in an Age of Globalization, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Jensen, Lars and Kristín Loftsdóttir (eds.) (2012) Whiteness and Postcolonialism in the Nordic Region, Aldershot: Ashgate.Knudsen, Britta Timm and Anne Marit Waade (eds.) (2010) Re-inventing Authenticity: Tourism, Place and the Emotions, Bristol: Channel View Publications.Konyshev, Valery and Aleksandr Sergunin (2012) ‘The Arctic at the Crossroads of Geopolitical Interests’, Russian Politics and Law 50.2: 245-253.Lück, M., P.T. Maher and E.J.Stewart (eds.) (2010) Cruise Tourism in the Polar Regions: Promoting Environmental and Social Responsibility, London: Earthscan.Nash, D. (1977) ‘Tourism as a form of imperialism’, in V.L. Smith (ed.) Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, pp. 33-47.Petersen, Robert (1995) ‘Colonialism as seen from a former colonised area’, Arctic Anthropology 32.3: 118-126.Pettersson, Robert (2009) Developing Indigenous Tourism: Visiting the Sami People of Northern Europe, Berlin: VDM Verlag.Poddar, Prem, Rajeev Patke and Lars Jensen (eds.) (2008) Historical Companion to Postcolonial Literatures: Continental Europe and its Empires, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.Ryall, Anka, Johan Schimanski and Henning Howlid Waerp (eds.) (2010) Arctic Discourses, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.Sale, Richard and Eugene Potapov (2010) The Scramble for the Arctic: Ownership, Exploitation and Conflict in the Far North, London: Frances Lincoln.Stewart, E.J., D. Draper and M. Johnston (2005) ‘A Review of Tourism Research in the Polar Regions’, Arctic 58.4: 383: 394

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PART B – Description of the CRP Implementation and Management

B1: Description of the consortium

The consortium has been designed to provide geographical range while building on the complementary skills and disciplinary expertise of its researchers. It has also been designed to reflect, both on the ‘Europeanness’ of the Arctic and on the limits of ‘Europe’ itself as a self- privileging idea with historical ties to regional and global colonial projects. Thus, while of the four partner countries––Denmark, Iceland, Norway and the UK––only Norway can unequivocally lay claim today to national territory that falls within the Arctic Circle, all are northern European countries with strong political and economic links to the Arctic as well as direct or indirect historical connections to Europe’s internally differentiated and––as many would see it––ideologically unfinished colonial past. The Arctic is part of Europe’s past, part of its present, and part of its aspirations for the future. However, the unique spatial configuration of the region, which connects Europe to Asia and North America, also suggests that the circumpolar Arctic––in Adriana Craciun’s terms––‘peripheralizes all of the imperial centres of the northern hemisphere, presenting us with a wholly alien planetary vision’ that is both explicitly critical of colonial ambition and implicitly re-constitutive of the global in the face of pressing environmental and human concerns (2009: 104).

The consortium is well positioned in other ways to pursue a ‘planetary’ and/or postcolonial approach to the European Arctic, and to explore recent tourism developments in the region and their cultural implications:

The University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University are among the largest universities in the UK, with strong track records in Arctic research and excellent academic infrastructure. The Institute for Colonial and Postcolonial Studies (ICPS) confirms Leeds’s status as national leader in this field, while Leeds Metropolitan was the first British university to be recognised officially (in 2010) for excellence in tourism research.

The University of Roskilde is one of Denmark’s best research universities, and faculty now associated with this project previously played a formative role in the major Scandinavian postcolonial research network, ‘The Nordic Colonial Mind’ (2006- 2008).

Faculty at the University of Iceland were also affiliated with this project, and the university has particular strengths in tourism research and Arctic studies.

So too does what is often considered to be the foremost northern European university for Arctic research, the University of Tromsø, where recent work on indigenous tourism development feeds directly into this project, and where a major new Centre for Indigenous Resilience (CEIR), is about to be set up.

Last but not least, the consortium’s four knowledge transfer partners (APs), deliberately chosen for their varied approach as well as their geographical range, are particularly well equipped to add value to the project (see C1 below).

Range and complementarity are equally in evidence among the researchers themselves, who work in or across a set of disciplines directly relevant to the project at hand:

The project leader, is an experienced project manager as well as a world-class scholar in comparative postcolonial literary/cultural studies, with twelve full-length books to his name. Much of his recent work is situated at the cusp of postcolonial and environmental studies, and he is also an acknowledged expert on travel writing.

The other UK-based PI, is a social anthropologist with over fifty refereed publications. She specialises in contemporary Nordic studies and tourism research and has longstanding academic connections to the University of Tromsø.

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The Denmark-based PI, is a wide-ranging literary/cultural scholar with established research interests in Nordic colonialisms, including Denmark’s relationship with Greenland. He has worked previously with another (Iceland-based) member of the consortium, on issues relating to travel and cultural identity in the Nordic countries, and has also recently published work on the global politics of climate change.

The Iceland-based PI, is an anthropologist specialising in tourism development in the North, the aesthetics of place, and the poetics/politics of travel narrative.

The Norway-based PI, is an anthropologist of Sámi descent and an award-winning documentary filmmaker. She specialises in Arctic tourism, and in indigenous and gender studies in the European High North.

Doctoral, postdoctoral and other academic researchers associated with the project (see B2 below) will benefit greatly from working with these established scholars, who already have extensive experience of working with one another on collaborative research Overall, the consortium has been designed to produce the best possible blend of women and men, established and emerging scholars, and multi- and cross-disciplinary researchers, most of whom already have some experience of working in international research teams. It has also been designed to maximise cooperation between co-workers and to ensure a high degree of integration between its constituent sub-projects. The following is a concise diagrammatic representation of these synergies:

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B2: Management structure and procedures

The CRP’s management structure is tightly organised while remaining non-hierarchical and collaborative, reflecting the transverse nature and transnational emphasis of the project.

as PL will be responsible for the overall management of the project. Along with the Leeds-based postdoctoral researcher, whom he will mentor, he will coordinate the two team sub-projects (WP1 and WP2) and co-lead the second (WP2, on the postcolonial Arctic); he will also oversee the project website (see C1 below).

will co-lead the first team sub-project (WP1, on ‘green’ travel/writing). She will also work with and other Tromsø-based researchers on the third-year exhibition while helping the Leeds-based postdoctoral researcher organise and implement the first-year postgraduate conference in the UK (see A2 above).

, along with his Roskilde colleague and the Roskilde-based doctoral researcher, who will be co-supervised by these two, will take responsibility for the second-year international conference in Denmark (see A2 above). He will co-lead WP2 (with).

will co-lead WP1 (with); she will also co-supervise (with) the work of the Reykjavik-based doctoral researcher.

will mentor the Tromsø-based postdoctoral researcher, and the two will work together with and a regionally (Kirkenes) based Sámi curator to set up and run the touring exhibition in Norway, Finland and Russia (see A2 above). Aided by the postdoctoral researcher, she will also work on a project-related documentary film, to be premiered at the Leeds International Festival (see C1 below).

The role of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers within this research team will be essential throughout. Younger researchers will not be expected to ‘run the show’, but they will be fully integrated into its joint activities and team projects, gaining invaluable experience in the process of academic management and international collaborative research work. Postdoctoral researchers, in particular, will play a crucial management role, though not to the detriment of their own research. Both doctoral and postdoctoral researchers will be given an opportunity, not just to publish their own research, but to co-publish with other, more experienced members of the research team, e.g. in the publications associated with WP1 and WP2. The roles of the two postdoctoral researchers can be outlined as follows:

The University of Leeds-based postdoctoral researcher will work on an 18-month contract at the University of Leeds (months 8-25: see A4 above). (PhD, UC Santa Cruz), an Arctic specialist with interests in postcolonial theory, ecocriticism and indigenous studies, will be encouraged to apply. Responsibilities include: written contributions to the ‘Postcolonial Arctic’ (PA) and ‘New Narratives of the Arctic’ (NN) conferences, and to WPs 1 and 2 (independent research); preliminary coordination (with) of WPs 1 and 2; co-organisation and implementation (with) of PA in 2014, and co-editing (also with) of the journal issue deriving from it; co-organisation and implementation (with and) of NN in 2015, and co-editing (also with and) of the journal issue deriving from it.

The University of Tromsø-based postdoctoral researcher will work on an 18-month contract at the University of Tromsø (months 18-36, designed so that there will be some overlap, and therefore opportunity for collaboration, between the two postdoctoral researchers). (PhD, University of Tromsø), an environmentally oriented anthropologist and photographer, will be encouraged to apply. Responsibilities include: WP5 (independent research); collaboration (with) on a documentary film (see C2 below); co-organisation and

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implementation (with and the curator) of the exhibition in 2016; written contributions to NN and WPs 1 and 2 based on WP5 research.

A final element of project management will be the inclusion of a four-person international advisory board made up of experts in the areas of European Arctic tourism and EU Arctic cultural policy. Comprised of an EU Arctic policy expert (, Manchester Metropolitan University), an Arctic tourism specialist (, Lakehead University), a major Nordic climate-change scholar and governmental advisor (, University of Oslo), and a distinguished Arctic scholar and anthropologist of tourism (, UC Berkeley), this board will not only supply independent assessments of project goals and impact strategy, but will also advise on the project’s relevance to current European Arctic policy and tourism concerns.

As explained above (see A2), the project’s three joint events will provide an opportunity for preliminary (Year 1), interim (Year 2), and final (Year 3) management meetings, to which all team members will be invited. An initial ‘kick-off’ meeting will also be held in Leeds during the early stages of the project, to which the five project PIs will be invited. Members of the advisory board will be encouraged to attend the project’s yearly meetings; if unable to do so in person, they will be video-linked. The PL will prepare reports following from these meetings, which will in turn be passed on to the advisory board for their comments and approval. Approved reports will then be sent to the HERA office for their records. Annual meetings will also be used to discuss ongoing impact strategy, a vital element of the project, which has knowledge transfer elements embedded within it from the start (see C1 below).

B3: Justification of resources

Project resources are primarily contained in three categories: staff costs, research costs andother direct costs.

In the first category, staff costs are requested to cover the time commitment of the following team members, who are all integral to the project (see B2 above): Prof. (PL, University of Leeds); Dr. (PI, Leeds Metropolitan University); Dr. (PI, University of Roskilde); Dr. (PI, University of Iceland); Dr. (PI, University of Tromsø); Dr. (team member, University of Roskilde); Dr. (team member, University of Iceland).

In the second category, research costs are requested to cover fees and maintenance or salaries, at national rates, for the following doctoral and postdoctoral researchers, who as explained above (see B2) are fully integrated into the consortium: Postdoctoral researcher 1 (University of Leeds); postdoctoral researcher 2 (University of Tromsø); doctoral researcher 1 (University of Roskilde); doctoral researcher 2 (University of Iceland).

In the third category, direct costs cover the following essential elements of the project: recruitment costs; project team meetings; project conferences; website development and maintenance; exhibition costs (note that there will be further in-kind contributions to the exhibition from a number of sources); film festival costs; fieldwork costs.

Further details on, and justifications for, the budget are provided in the following pages.

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B 3.1: Detailed Requested Budget for each PI’s Individual Project

PI number: 1

PI name and Institution: Professor, University of Leeds

BUDGET ITEMS

YEAR 1

Budget

(Euros)

YEAR 2

Budget

(Euros)

YEAR 3

Budget

(Euros)

TOTAL Budget

(Euros)

Senior researcher

Post-doc. Researcher

Subtotal Employment costs 102,720

Subtotal Equipment 0 0 0 0

ENCARC project conferences - travel 1,535 2,029

536

3,564

HERA launch and closing events 525 1,061

Advisory Board meetings 3,757 4,149 4,191 12,097

Subtotal Travel and meeting costs 5,817 6,178 4,727 16,722

Conference organisation costs (e.g.

room hire & catering)2,309

2,309

Project meetings (room hire & catering) 560 560

Website 1,154 1,154

Recruitment costs 577 577

Subtotal Consumables 4,600 0 0 4,600

Leeds Film Festival 7,863 7,863

Exhibition 26,024 26,024

Subtotal Dissemination and KE 0 0 33,887 33,887

Other costs (e.g. sub-contracting). 0

Overheads (if applicable) 54,102 34,212 4,211 92,525

T O T A L 250,454

Employment: Professor time commitment (3 hours per week) and a full time postdoctoral researcher for 18 months at the beginning of the project.

Travel and meetings: Attendance of the PL at the Roskilde-hosted conference (year 2) and HERA JRP launch and closing events. Costs are also requested for 2 visiting speakers at the Leeds-hosted PG conference and for the advisory board to meet annually.

Consumables: The organisation of the Leeds-hosted PG conference and first two project meetings (year 1), website set up costs and recruitment costs for the postdoctoral researcher.

Dissemination and knowledge exchange: The running costs of project events associated with the Leeds Film Festival. For the exhibition, PI travel and curator fees. Note: The exhibition costs are split between Leeds and Tromsø so as to share costs across the consortium, and also due to funding-body advice on eligible costs.

Overheads: Charged at standard rates in line with national funder rules.

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PI number: 2PI name and Institution: Dr, Leeds Metropolitan University

BUDGET ITEMS

YEAR 1Budget

(in Euros)

YEAR 2Budget

(in Euros)

YEAR 3Budget

(in Euros)

TOTALBudget

(in Euros)

Senior researcher


Subtotal Equipment 0 0 0 0ENCARC project conferences - travel 0 640 0 640HERA launch and closing events 520 0 520 1,040

Subtotal Travel and meeting costs 520 640 520 1,680

Subtotal Consumables 0 0 0 0

Exhibition 0 0 760 760Subtotal Dissemination and KE costs 760 760

Other costs (e.g. sub-contracting). Please specify


T O T A L 27,821

Employment: Dr’s time commitment (3 hours per week).

Travel and meetings: Attendance of the PI at the Roskilde-hosted conference (year 2) and HERA JRP launch and closing events.

Dissemination and knowledge exchange: The cost of the PI’s attendance at the exhibition in Tromsø.


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PI number: 3PI name and Institution: Dr, University of Roskilde

BUDGET ITEMS

YEAR 1

Budget(Euros)

YEAR 2Budget(Euros)

YEAR 3Budget(Euros)

TOTALBudget(Euros)

Senior researchersPhD student (50% internally funded)



ENCARC project conferences - travel 2,400 4,800

650

7,200HERA launch and closing events; Initial PI meeting (Leeds) 1300 1950

Subtotal Travel and meeting costs 3,700 4,800 650 9,150

Conference organisation costs (e.g. room hire & catering)

350

6,600 6,600Project meetings (room hire & catering) 325 325Recruitment costs 350

Subtotal Consumables 350 6,925 0 7,275

Leeds Film Festival 2,400 2,400Exhibition 2,850 2,850Subtotal Dissemination and KE costs 5,250 5,250

Other costs (e.g. sub-contracting). Please specify


T O T A L 233,117

Employment: Dr ’s time commitment (3 hours per week), Dr time commitment (1.5 hours per week), and a full time PhD student (50% internally funded).

Travel and meetings: Attendance of Dr at the HERA JRP launch and closing events. Costs are also requested for attendance at the initial project meeting (PI), Leeds PG conference (Drs & and the PhD student), and Roskilde conference (Dr, 2 Icelandic Tourist Board representatives and 1 Verddevuohta representative).

Consumables: The organisation of the Roskilde-hosted conference (year 2) and a project meeting (both year 2). Recruitment costs are requested for the PhD student.

Dissemination and knowledge exchange: The costs of Dr, Dr and the PhD student attending the Leeds Film Festival and exhibition (Tromsø).


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PI number: 4PI name and Institution: Dr, University of Iceland

BUDGET ITEMSYEAR 1Budget

(in Euros)

YEAR 2Budget

(in Euros)

YEAR 3Budget

(in Euros)

TOTALBudget

(in Euros)

Senior researchersPhD research student


Subtotal Equipment 0 0 0 0ENCARC project conferences- travel 2,400 2,400 0 4,800HERA launch and closingevents; Initial PI meeting 1,300 0 650(Leeds) 1,950Fieldwork 500 1,000 500 2,000Subtotal Travel and meeting costs 4,200 3,400 1150 8,750Recruitment costs 350 0 0 350

Subtotal Consumables 350 0 0 350

Leeds Film Festival 0 0 2,400 2,400Exhibition 0 0 2,850 2,850Subtotal Dissemination and KE costs 0 0 5,250 5,250

Other costs (e.g. sub- contracting).

Overheads (if applicable)

T O T A L 127,767

Employment: Dr’s time commitment (3 hours per week), Dr’s time commitment (1.5 hours per week), and a full time PhD student.

Travel and meetings: Attendance of Dr at the HERA JRP launch and closing events. Costs are also requested for attendance at the initial project meeting (Dr) and conferences at Leeds and Roskilde (Drs & and the PhD student). Fieldwork costs are requested to support the PhD student’s research.

Consumables: Recruitment costs are requested for the PhD student.

Dissemination and knowledge exchange: The costs of Dr, Dr and the PhD student attending the Leeds Film Festival and exhibition (Tromsø).

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PI number: 5PI name and Institution: Dr, University of Tromsø

BUDGET ITEMS

YEAR 1

Budget(Euros)

YEAR 2Budget(Euros)

YEAR 3Budget(Euros)

TOTALBudget(Euros)

Senior researcherPost-doc. Researcher



ENCARC project conferences - travel 800 1,600

650

3,200HERA launch and closing events; Initial PI meeting (Leeds) 1,300 1950Fieldwork 0 1000 1000 2000

Subtotal Travel and meeting costs 2,100 2,600 1,650 6,350

Project meetings (room hire & catering)Recruitment costs 700

325 325700

Subtotal Consumables 0 700 325 1,025

Leeds Film Festival 1,600 1,600Exhibition 19,700 19,700

Subtotal Dissemination and KE 0 0 21,300 21,300

Other costs (e.g. sub-contracting). Please specify 0 0 0 0

Overheads (if applicable) 0 0 0 0

T O T A L 347,024

Employment: Dr’s time commitment (3 hours per week) and a full time postdoctoral researcher for 18 months, i.e. during the second half of the project.

Travel and meetings: Attendance of the PI at the Leeds- and Roskilde-hosted conferences, the initial project meeting (Leeds), and the HERA JRP launch and closing events. Travel costs for the postdoctoral researcher to attend the Roskilde conference are also requested.

Consumables: Recruitment costs for the postdoctoral researcher and catering and room hire for the year 3 project meeting.

Dissemination and knowledge exchange: The costs of the PI and postdoctoral researcher attending the Leeds Film Festival; a contribution to the production and set up of the exhibition.

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B 3.2: Overall requested budget of the CRP for the whole duration of the project

BUDGET ITEMS

TOTAL Budget-PI 1 (Euros)

TOTAL Budget–PI 2 (Euros)

TOTAL Budget-PI 3

(Euros)

TOTAL Budget–PI 4

(Euros)

TOTAL Budget - PI 5 (Euros) TOTAL CRP

Budget(Euros)

1. Employment costs 690,317

2. Equipment 0 0 0 0 0 0

3. Travel and meeting costs 16,722 1,680 9,150 8,750 6,350 43,452

4. Consumables 4,600 0 7,275 350 1,025 13,250

5. Dissemination and Knowledge Exchange costs 33,887 760 5,250 5,250 21,300 66,447

6. Other costs (e.g. sub- contracting). Please specify 0 0 0 0 0 0

7. Overheads (if applicable) 92,525 9,762 71,230 0 0 173,517

T O T A L 986,983

Time commitments and (as far as possible) numbers of staff on the project are consistent across the consortium. Similarly, events (travel and meeting costs, consumables) have been allocated between partners to ensure that the project’s impact is maximised across a number of locations and to share the costs. For dissemination and knowledge exchange, costs are focused on Leeds and Tromsø due to the existing networks present in those countries, for example, the University of Leeds’s link to the Leeds Film Festival.

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B 3.3: Additional funding

Roskilde University will be providing 50% of the funding for their PhD research studentship. The total cost of the project exhibition is projected to be €121,500. Of this total, the Arts Council Norway, Barents Secretariat and the Funding Council of Lapland will provide €70,500.

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PART C – Potential Impact

C1: Relevance to the call for proposals

The project is relevant to the call for proposals in three main ways. First and most obviously, it adopts a broad humanities approach to a series of debates and issues (tourism in the Arctic, the impact of recent tourism developments, the influence of climate change, etc.) that are more usually subject to social-scientific theories and methods, e.g. by putting the study of contemporary forms of cultural representation alongside, and in close dialogue with, tourism’s social consequences and ecological effects.

Second and more specifically, it recognises that tourism and travel writing have long operated as spaces for the staging, material and symbolic, of cultural encounter; tourism, indeed, has been called the archetypal cultural encounter of the modern world (Mitchell 1989; see also Bruner 1994 above). Both tourism and travel writing continue to provide an important source for the creation and maintenance of cultural distinctiveness. However, neither can take refuge any more in the classic distinctions (e.g. ‘tourist’ versus ‘native’) on which they previously depended; and both increasingly rely on the hybridised modes of cultural identity created by current conditions of globalisation, modes that often reveal the complex patterns of transplantation and displacement embedded within the term ‘culture’ itself (see A2 above). Likewise, tourism and travel writing, long seen as vehicles for imperialist attitudinising, are now sometimes praised for their imaginative capacity to produce new forms of cross-cultural understanding and shared belonging in an increasingly globalised world. The project shows, accordingly, how touristic exchange–– while still often supporting uneven relations of power––serves to complicate the easy distinction between ‘outsider’ and ‘insider’ visions of the Arctic, and suggests instead three interconnected perceptions of the region as a local, a global, and a European cultural space.

Directly following on from this, the third area of relevance to the call is that of Europe itself. As previously explained (see A2 and A3 above), the project deliberately focuses on the European Arctic, both in order to show the centrality of the Arctic region to European economic and political aspirations, but also to suggest its cultural role in modifying––and significantly complicating––European understandings of itself. To many in Europe and elsewhere, countries like Greenland and Iceland may not register as belonging to Europe at all, while those relatively remote, sparsely populated parts of Europe that fall within the Arctic Circle tend to be seen as marginal to European interests. The project’s enduring importance will be to show––not just in specific academic terms, but also as a means of raising general public consciousness––that, on the contrary, the Arctic is central to Europe’s sense of itself, its collective role in tackling urgent social and environmental problems, and its understanding of its changing position in an increasingly globalised world.

C2: Relevance of CRP outcomes; role of APs

The CRP’s main outputs are as follows:

Two PhD theses, one to be published by the University of Iceland and the other earmarked for publication in the University of Leiden’s ‘Arctic Identities’ series;

Two conference-derived journal special issues, already confirmed with the UK-based journals Studies in Travel Writing and Moving Worlds;

Two co-written e-books (on ‘green’ travel/writing in the Arctic and the postcolonial Arctic, respectively, to be published in Palgrave’s new fast-track Pivot series);

A documentary film, ‘Liquid Borders, Liquid Land’, creatively exploring social, cultural and environmental changes in the European High North, to be added to the project as an independently funded in-kind benefit and premiered at the 2015 Leeds International Film Festival;

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A dedicated website; A three-site exhibition (Tromsø [Norway], Rovaniemi [Finland], Murmansk [Russia]).

While the PhD theses and journal special issues are primarily for an academic readership, the two e-books will be written for a crossover audience while the film, the website and the exhibition will all be designed for general public consumption. Publication will be open access wherever possible, with an emphasis on state-of-the-art digital technologies. This is in keeping with the project’s overall aim to raise public consciousness of pressing social and environmental issues, which, while they might appear confined to the margins of Europe, are actually central to contemporary European cultural and political concerns (see C1 above). Tourism, it also bears reminding here, is a major conduit for general public understanding––sometimes misunderstanding––of ‘other’ societies and cultures, and though the number of tourists travelling in the European High North is still relatively small, it is significantly growing, while tourism in general remains the largest industry in the world.

The overall impact of the project will be enhanced by (1) open-access publishing; (2) an interactive website; (3) the invitation of local media, and National Tourist Board representatives from the partner countries, to the main events associated with the project; (4) the incorporation of environment-oriented public lectures and roundtable discussions into these events, e.g. in conjunction with current climate-change initiatives; and (5) the provision of a multi-media public exhibition as the project’s culminating event.

Above all, project impact will be markedly increased by the full participation of four confirmed associated partners (APs): the Finland-based environmental cooperative Snowchange, the Leeds International Film Festival, the Icelandic Tourist Board, and the Norway-based indigenous collective Verddevuohta. The four APs, deliberately chosen for their varied approach as well as their geographical range, are well equipped to add value to the project, particularly in the key area of knowledge transfer (see C3 below):

The Snowchange Collective is one of Scandinavia’s best-known environmental cooperatives, specialising in Eastern Sápmi (Finland, Russia) climate-change and indigenous activism.

The Icelandic Tourist Board is well known for taking a progressive, sustainability- oriented approach to tourism in the country, with a particular emphasis on cultural and environmental modes of tourism.

Verddevuohta is a Kvaenangen-based Sámi collective that uses tourism and tourism- related products to build intercultural dialogues along traditional northern trading routes.

The Leeds International Film Festival, one of the largest in the UK, is known for promoting cultural diversity in one of the UK’s most vibrant multicultural cities. Its varied programmes often feature anthropologically oriented documentary work.

It should be emphasised here that the APs are in a sense misnamed, for while HERA rules prevent them from being able to benefit financially from the consortium, they will be fully integrated into its joint events and activities from the start. The APs are not just there to enhance knowledge transfer, although this will be their primary role; they are also there to help organise and implement project activities. Snowchange will be especially active in this respect, playing a formative role in the Leeds Film Festival as well as the end-of-project exhibition; members of Verddevuohta will participate in the 2015 conference in Roskilde; while both Verddevuohta and the Icelandic Tourist Board will play a culturally advisory as well as an intellectually participatory role throughout. In this sense and others, the project aims not only to study postcolonial cultural encounter, but also actively to produce it, both in the interactions between its academic and associated partners and in the kinds of cross-cultural dialogues these interactions represent.

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C3: Knowledge exchange and transfer; intellectual property issues

Knowledge transfer is embedded within all of the CRP’s activities, and is by no means limited to or interchangeable with dissemination strategy, though at least some of the project’s principal publications are aimed at general as well as academic audiences (see C2 above). Opportunities for knowledge exchange fall into three broad-based categories: (1) those forms of transfer effected by the project’s associated partners, (2) diverse public events and cultural activities, (3) EU policy- oriented initiatives directed and facilitated by members of the project’s international advisory board.

(1) The project’s associated partners are committed to the prospect of productive interchange with other members of the consortium. These partners will play a key role in facilitating different kinds of knowledge transfer, which may be summarised as follows:

The Snowchange Collective has strong links to several major international bodies such as the US National Science Foundation, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the Arctic Council. It also works closely with indigenous communities across the European Arctic region, where one of its main aims is to close the gap between site- specific academic research–– involving both indigenous and non-indigenous scholars–– and the various itinerant Northern indigenous communities whose traditional knowledge and cultural autonomy it supports. The Collective plays a consciousness-raising role for a variety of constituencies, both within and outside the European Arctic region. In the context of the CRP, it aims to broaden knowledge of this region by (a) translating and documenting verbal and visual material from little-known eastern Sámi communities, material which will then be showcased in the 2016 public exhibition; (b) participating in the 2015 film festival in Leeds, where its director, Dr, will accompany an eastern Sámi filmmaker, as part of the festival’s Arctic film season; and (c) co-organising and implementing a Sámi-oriented oral literature event in conjunction with the festival (see also 2 below).

The Icelandic Tourist Board is committed to presenting a diversified image of contemporary Iceland as a place of cultural breadth as well as natural beauty. Its main aim is to extend the knowledge base of Iceland for local as well as foreign visitors to the island, and while it primarily intends that knowledge to be used for commercial purposes, it is also alert to the changing needs and desires of the various cultural constituencies it serves. The ITB’s main knowledge-transfer function in the project will be to match academic ideas to current and future tourism policy in Iceland. With this end in mind, it will send at least one representative to the 2015 conference in Roskilde to present on current ITB initiatives and cultural policy. It will also participate, directly or indirectly, in the 2015 film festival and the 2016 exhibition.

Like the ITB, Verddevuohta will send at least one representative to the 2015 conference in Roskilde. As part of its ongoing commitment to decolonisation in the Nordic region, it aims to profit from the theoretically oriented discussions around Arctic colonialism that are integral to the HERA project, using these to inform its more practical, community based approach. Its other main role in the project will be to provide exhibits for the 2016 exhibition, which is designed in part to highlight indigenous (Sámi) contributions to the European Arctic tourist industries. It will also advise on indigenous cultural protocol in the context of these industries and offer links between academic and non-academic cultural producers, both in the immediate (Troms) region and beyond.

The Leeds International Film Festival, which drew more than 30,000 visitors in 2011, has agreed to put on a season of films from the European Arctic in conjunction with its 2015 offerings. The entire film festival is, to some degree, an exercise in knowledge transfer in so far as it promotes appreciation of different, sometimes little-known cultures. In the case of the Arctic film season, this appreciation will be enhanced by the participation of three indigenous actors and/or filmmakers: (Norway, northern Sámi, and a key

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member of the consortium: see B1 above), (Finland, eastern Sámi), and (Greenland, Inuit), all of whom will be invited to Leeds to present and talk about their work.

(2) All activities and events associated with the project will be open to the public, and every effort will be made to attract and include members of European Arctic communities in these activities and events. Along with the 2016 exhibition, which will have an explicitly consciousness-raising function for indigenous and non-indigenous audiences alike, and which also aims to promote knowledge exchange between the region’s various indigenous communities, the project will feature the following impact-enhancing activities:

Public talks, lectures and information activities incorporated into the main events (the 2014 and 2015 conferences, the film festival, the exhibition);

Environment-oriented roundtable discussions associated with these events, e.g. in conjunction with current Snowchange climate-change initiatives and the environmentalist wing of the Leeds International Film Festival;

The invitation of local media, and National Tourist Board representatives from the partner countries, to these events, with the latter playing a fully participatory role.

Publicity for the project will also be generated by media appearances and reports, timed strategically to coincide with project milestones (see A4 above) and facilitated by the partner universities’ press offices. Members of the consortium, both individually and collectively, will be encouraged to make use of their local, regional and national press connections, while the excellent outreach potential of the APs will also be drawn upon, e.g. to set up interviews with leading indigenous figures, tourism-industry officials, and environmental activists.

(3) One of the main roles of the project’s advisory board (see B2 above) will be to provide expert guidance on EU Arctic policy issues, e.g. those relating to regional governance, tourism development, and climate change. While the broad imperatives of EU Arctic policy––robust governance, the fair treatment of people, and the protection of natural resources within the region––are clearly echoed in the consortium’s consciousness-raising activities, guidance will be needed in order to ensure the best possible fit between current academic initiatives and future policy concerns.

Members of the board, to which the PL will report at each stage of the project (see B2 above), will be available to comment on the design, feasibility and management of the project, but also to advise on its relevance to EU/European Arctic policy. The board will offer specific suggestions on what and how to report to EU/European bodies: these policy advisories will be incorporated into the PL’s preliminary, interim and advanced project summaries, and will be included in more specific and directed form in his final project report.

Finally, the board will advise on any potential intellectual property issues, e.g. those relating to indigenous knowledge. (As suggested above, the Snowchange and Verddevuohta cooperatives, which have strong links to indigenous communities, will also be consulted on these issues.) While it is not anticipated that there will be major IP problems with the project, members of the consortium, who will also seek advice as required from their universities’ respective ethics committees, will look to maintain the highest ethical standards throughout.

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SHORT CV

Prof. (School of English, University of Leeds)

Current position:

Professional activities (selection):

Awards and honours (selection):

Research interests:

Current/recent relevant research projects:

Recent relevant publications (selection):

Previous relevant publication:

Current relevant work:

part a – description of the collaborative research project...

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