UArctic Chair on Images, Perceptions and Mediations of the Arctic
The UArctic Chair on Images, Perceptions and Mediations of the Arctic aims to study, in a comparative, multilingual, interdisciplinary and collaborative way, the different cultural and social representations of and about the Arctic. The Chair is supported by the infrastructure of the International Laboratory for Research on Images of the North, Winter and the Arctic, founded in 2003 by Professor Chartier, which forms a research, dissemination, publication, expertise and cooperation organisation for establishing contacts between all Arctic cultures (with past and on-going funded research projects involving Canada, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, the Faroe Islands, Iceland, Greenland), as well as with Arctic communities, including Indigenous organisations (Inuit, Innu, Greenlandic, Atikamekw, Saami). Since it was founded, the Laboratory has brought together over 700 researchers, artists and writers from the North and the Arctic in its projects and activities. It has published nearly 70 books, many in translation, and carried out a great number of scientific and dissemination activities. Current projects include: (a) the creation of an artificial intelligence infrastructure to understand the evolution of cultural representations of the North (based on the Imaginaire | Nord infrastructure, which already contains more than 100,000 social and cultural representations of the North and the Arctic, a Canadian Innovation Fund Leaders project); (b) a cooperation project on literature as a social vector (with the University of Umeå); (c) a cooperation agreement with the Greenland Authors' Association, part of a project to promote Inuit literature (based on the inuit.uqam.ca reference website, a Heritage Canada project), as well as (d) participation in “Mediated Arctic Geographies” (with the University of Tampere) and (e) “Arctic Hysteria and Other Strange Emotions” (with the University of Helsinki) collective research projects. The Laboratory also runs 4 book collections on the North and the Arctic. Through its efforts to bring all cultures of the Arctic closer together, the Laboratory has published many multilinguial books, organized many international colloquia (in Montréal, Sept-Îles, Stockholm, Bergen, Reykjavik, Tampere, Torshavn, Umeã, etc. ), and collaborated with numerous academic institutions (University of Stockholm, Copenhagen, Umeå, Helsinki, Tampere, Bergen, Oslo, Tromsø, Reykjavik, Faroe Islands, Greenland), non-profit organizations and media.
The Laboratory serves as support and research animation for the UArctic Chair on Images, Perceptions and Mediations of the Arctic, which will help to booster the academic and circumpolar research and dissemination work on cultural and social Images of the Arctic.
The Chair is held by Professor Daniel Chartier, recognized as an outstanding world-class researcher in the field of cultural and social representations of the North, Winter and the Arctic. Since 2001, Daniel Chartier has been involved in numerous cooperative projects with Indigenous organizations and research bodies on the North and the Arctic, both in Canada and abroad. His work takes a multicultural and circumpolar perspective in collaboration with communities, which involves respecting and defending Arctic multilingualism and building bridges between the North and the rest of the world.
UArctic's Scientific Council has appointed Professor Daniel Chartier to the UArctic Chair on Images, Perceptions and Mediations of the Arctic for a five-year term, starting January 1, 2025.
Disciplines involved
Culture, literature, film, geography, media, visual arts
Project duration
January 1, 2025 to December 31, 2029
Recognition
UArctic Scientific Council
Funding
Université du Québec à Montréal and Fondation de l'UQAM