On Friday October 4 the Centre for Arctic Policy Studies at the University of Iceland, Denmark and the New North Atlantic and EDDA – Center of Excellence will host a symposium titled “Claiming the North: (Re-)territorializing the “Westnordic Arctic”“. The symposium will take place at the University of Iceland, Askja building, room 132, at 13:00-18:00.

This international and cross-disciplinary symposium will facilitate a discussion on current and potential restructuring in the circumpolar North with a focus on the West-Nordic Arctic and Subarctic regions. Particular attention is paid to identity politics, with a focus on the processes that construct majorities and minorities, core and peripheries. Discussions will focus on the multiple transnational effects of colonial ties, climate change, industrial activity and increased mobility on sovereign and indigenous rights, economic interests and cultural issues.

Keynotes:

Michael Herzfeld, Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University:  Where Ambiguity Serves the Interests of Power: Testing the Fuzzy Edges of Crypto-Colonialism

Kirsten Thisted, Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen: Imperial ghosts in the North Atlantic – old and new narratives about the colonial relations between Denmark and Greenland