Anna Niia Varfolomeeva

Tag: Finland

  • A New Collaboration for the New Year

    2026 began with good funding news: our research-art initiative “Tar, Power, Cloud: Strengthening Resilience through Art & Citizen Science” has recently received support from the Frontiers of Arctic and Global Resilience (FRONT) profiling research programme at the University of Oulu.

    In this project, we aim to bridge ethnographic research, artistic practice, and citizen science to explore how industrial and technological development shapes human–landscape relations in the town of Muhos, just outside Oulu. I have long been interested in exploring the potential of research-art collaboration around questions of resource extraction in the Arctic. So, this feels like such an important opportunity – and hopefully (not too late for the New Year resolutions, right?), this is just the beginning.

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  • Notes from an Arctic retreat

    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.

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  • Feelings of sustainability

    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).

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  • Time to pause and attend

    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.

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