Last week, Oulu hosted the annual Fall colloquium of the Finnish Society for Environmental Social Science (YHYS). This was my first experience with YHYS, and although I had only just recovered from a rather fierce virus and wasn’t at my best, I was quickly drawn in by the colloquium’s vibrant atmosphere. My main sources of inspiration, however, may sound unusual: nothingness, failure, and the absence of words.
Last week, just as the grant submission emotions were finally settling down, I got to experience a bit of tourist Lapland. The project REBOUND, focusing on just green transition in the Finnish North, had a two-day workshop and retreat in a holiday village right at the Arctic Circle.
Amidst the heat of the grant application season, it is difficult to keep up with the blog. But very cool things are happening: over the past two weeks, I have taken part in conversations on emotional practices and relations within sustainability transitions at two conferences in opposite parts of Finland.
First, at the Science for Sustainability conference in the heart of Helsinki, we held a panel devoted to actors often marginalized in energy transition debates in the North: Indigenous residents, migrant workers, animals, and nature. Our five-minute lightning talks were followed by a discussion on just transition and belonging (including some critical remarks on whether justice for all is actually achievable).
“Go then, there are other worlds than these.” The line from The Dark Tower came back to me when I encountered an inspiring quote by Elizabeth Povinelli that also resonates with my research:
“But no world is actual one world. The feeling that one lives in the best condition of the world unveils the intuition that there is always more than one world in the world at any one time“ (Povinelli 2011, original emphasis).
After returning from the industrial heritage congress TICCIH in Kiruna, I am still thinking and writing about company towns. So much is represented and carried through them: the search for a human-built paradise and the struggle against perceived wilderness, hopes and aspirations often followed by regrets and nostalgia. Perhaps I am fascinated by Arctic industrial settlements because they reveal something fundamental about life itself.
The University of Oulu recently launched its Arctic Summer Programme: a series of two-week courses for international students that explore the Arctic region through lectures, discussions, and practical experiences in Northern Finland.
This week, I taught two lectures on Indigenous notions of sustainability and human–resource relations in the Arctic to a mixed group from two courses: Arctic and Nordic Perspectives on Sustainable Development and Global Citizenship Education. The students ranged from Bachelor’s to advanced Master’s level, with backgrounds from education to engineering and nursing – an inspiring but challenging mix.
My article on women’s mining labor in Russian Karelia was recently published in Laboratorium journal; the longest I’ve ever spent working on a single text.
Its first life began in 2018, when I shared an early draft at a workshop on gender and materiality in Aarhus. Later, I reworked it for a special issue on gender, design, and material culture in (post-)Soviet Russia. That work ended abruptly in March 2022, soon after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
(more…)In just a couple of days, this Saturday, Finland will close down for Juhannus (Midsummer): the towns will be practically empty, and here in Oulu, even bus transportation will stop for a day. After almost five years, I’ve come to appreciate how the two main Finnish holidays, Joulu (Christmas) and Juhannus, reflect the yearly rhythms so well, highlighting the darkest and the lightest days of the year. Both of these focal points of the planetary cycle are met with quietness and apprehension.
I often call myself an interdisciplinary researcher, but how often do I actually think about what that means? Well, not as often as I’d like to! But last week, I had a chance to reflect on this deeply during three vibrant days as the University of Oulu hosted the 47th Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS) conference.
As busy May comes to an end, it’s time to recap my recent two-week research visit to the Center for Contemporary Challenges at the University of Pécs in Hungary, hosted by Dr. Judit Farkas. This visit was generously supported by a mobility grant from the Frontiers of Arctic and Global Resilience (FRONT) research program at the University of Oulu.
I had not been to Hungary since my PhD defense at Central European University, so I saw this visit as an opportunity to reconnect with the Hungarian research environment. The history of higher education in Pécs dates back to 1367, and, as you can see, the main university building looks quite a bit like Hogwarts (and feels like a labyrinth at times, too).
Anna Niia Varfolomeeva 