Heidi Sinevaara-Niskanen is a researcher in the Unit for Gender Studies at the University of Lapland and a member of the NPE research group of the Arctic Centre. Her research focuses on sustainable development, its social dimension in particular, and questions of knowledge and participation in Arctic politics.
Heidi hiking and plucking blueberries in Nuuksvaara, Rovaniemi, in the autumn 2014.
My research discusses the ways in which development, knowledge and power are intertwined in Arctic Politics. The research combines three areas of research that I am interested in: international politics, Arctic and feminist research. My approach is framed by a strong commitment to and consensus on the production of knowledge, which has been and continues to be one of the distinguishing features of Arctic politics. I argue that it is through knowledge in fact that power over Arctic development is exercised. The research brings to light some of the silences and inequalities of the accounts of Arctic development that are constructed through knowledge.
The context of my research is the Arctic Council and its Sustainable Development Working Group. The research draws on critical research, in particular Foucault-inspired and feminist discussions of power, knowledge and development. My focus is on questions of indigeneity and gender and the ways in which the related issues derive from, are shaped by or are lacking in the accounts of Arctic development and the accounts of the agents of that development.
On the verge of having one research process finalised and starting a new one, I am eager to learn more. The past years– more than ten of them – in the university have provided me with experience in and insights into research, teaching and administration, for which I am very happy. It might be that one never knows what one, eventually, will be “isona” (when one grows up), but I am sure that for me it is something that has to do with the North.