Welcome to my website and blog. I am a Politics and Cultural Studies scholar and a Professor of Northern Politics and Government at the University of Lapland, Finland. Before moving to the University of Lapland, I worked for several years at UiT the Arctic University of Norway’s University Museum, where I still lead an ongoing research project “The New Sámi Renaissance: Nordic Colonialism, Social Change and Indigenous Cultural Policy (NESAR, 2021-2024) funded by the Research Council of Norway (see https://en.uit.no/project/nesar).
My pathway to academia and to Northern Politics in particular has not been straightforward at all. I was born in Helsinki and trained first as an art educationist and photographer at the University of Art and Design of Helsinki. However, after eye-opening and transformative time and experiences in the Middle East around the turn of the millennium, I left to London to study International politics at SOAS School of Oriental and African Studies, and to write a PhD on the politics and representation of the second Palestinian intifada (University of East London). However, in 2007 changes in personal life took me to Rovaniemi in Northern Finland. where I have lived since then.
Since then, the focus of my research has shifted from Middle East to questions of contemporary colonialism, and the politics of knowledge and identity within my own society. In particular, my research has focused on the relationships between the Finnish state and society and the Indigenous Sámi, and especially on the conflict around Sámi identity and the legal Sámi definition. As I explain in the article “Can the Sámi Speak Now? Deconstructive Research Ethos and the Debate on Who is a Sámi in Finland” (Cultural Studies, 2016) I was originally alarmed about the centrality of this conflict for Sámi self-determination by my spouse who is Sámi and who had been following its development first hand since the early 1990s. Since then the conflict, which may be understood best in terms of political self-indigenisation, has become even more prominent and also the transnational extent of the phenomenon (which elsewhere is discussed increasingly in various other terms, such as ethnic fraud, race shifting and indigenous identity appropriation), has become more clear.
At the University of Lapland, one of my key challenges is to develop research and teaching on Arctic World Politics, as the University of Lapland is launching a new multidisciplinary MA program on this topic. While the current war in Ukraine is bringing back old divisions and creating new ones, the Arctic has for long presented an example of a region where peace and the spirit of cooperation has prevailed even in situations of international / super power conflict. That is what we should promote also in future. A good place to start is by focusing research on the present realities and needs as well as future visions of the region’s Indigenous peoples whose existence has never been structured around the nation state boundaries.
When I first launched this website, I thought I would start blogging actively. It turns out that is not my thing but I do try to write something at least occasionally. Meanwhile, I also use the website to upload my academic publications and to make them available for open sharing. When I have time (will I ever?), I also plan to post short introductory texts to some of the articles, to tell more about their background and context, and to build better understanding of the ways in which social contexts and personal experiences in which research is done guide actual research processes. In addition to improving research transparency, I hope that such “background knowledge” will make my research more interesting to read.
Finally, I plan to use this site to bring some of my old photographic work back to life. For now that project is taking off in Instagram that I have just started using. You can find me there with the username Junkaaikio.
All photographs uploaded on this website are mine, unless otherwise indicated. Building the site and content in ways described above takes time which I, as a researcher, and a mother of four, do not have too much of, so I thank you for patience. If you have questions or need to contact me, you are welcome to do so via this website or through email, laura.junka-aikio[at]ulapland.fi.
Laura Junka-Aikio