The 7th Nordic Challenges Conference – titled Uncertain Futures: Nordic (In-)Securities, New Geopolitics, and Societal Ruptures – will take place 22–24 May 2024 at the University of Iceland. It will focus on several key themes shaping contemporary Nordic politics, societies, and cultures and their significance within a larger global context.

We are accepting proposals for panels, roundtables and other events related to one of the following conference themes:

• Political Identities and Loyalties:
  • What (has) happened to the Nordic model? Liberal democracy: assessing the damage; nationalism and authoritarianism; populism: Nordic trends and international comparisons; Nordic democracy contributions to democratic innovation on a global scale; Nordic democratic resources and global challenges: climate change, ecological collapse and information wars. 
    

• The Impact of the Ukraine War:
  • The end of Swedish and Finnish non-alignment; pan-Nordic security options and new European security constellations; the revival of geopolitics and Cold War tensions; the role of the Nordic countries in a post-war settlement; the ecological consequences of the war; re-examining Nordic relationships with Russia; post-war Russian scenarios, potentials, alternatives: Nordic responses to a social, economic and political collapse, a regime change and/or a radical nationalist resurgence; socio-political and cultural responses to the war on “our doorstep” as against “other wars”; exceptionalist policies and Ukrainian refugees in the Nordic countries.

• Gender Identities and Culture Wars:
  • The Nordic approach in transnational comparison; transgender debates, consequences, reception; shifts in forward facing policies and cultural practices; the evolution and current state of Nordic policies and guidelines; engaging with and transforming existing policies on sexual harassment at the workplace; SOGIE refugees and asylum seekers.  

• History, Memory and Tainted Pasts:
  • History, memory, and forgetting; Nordic collaboration and resistance; colonialism and decolonization: rights, legacies, and complicity; Nordic discourses on development, self-determination and historical violence; intra-Nordic colonial histories; the archaeology of narratives of colonized and the colonizers; from contestations to reconciliations: migration, policies, cultural discourses and collaborations.
    

• Arctic Spaces and Narratives: 
  • The end of Arctic exceptionalism; competitive versus cooperative Arctic narratives; the effects of climate change; Nordic cooperation and Arctic governance; historical and contemporary narratives of Arctic geopolitics; (dis-)engaging with Russia in the Arctic; the Nordics and China’s Polar Silk Road project; the role of the Nordic countries in the U.S.-China global rivalry; economic, social, political, and cultural trajectories in Arctic communities; hegemonic power, decolonization and indigeneity in the Arctic; the colonial politics of the “Third Pole”: taking the Arctic model to the Himalayas.   

 

A panel includes four papers in a 90 minute session, with 15 minutes for each presentation and 30 minutes for discussion.

Proposals should be submitted – by 30 November 2023 – to this email address: eddacenter@hi.is