Gender in Sápmi

Gender in Sápmi is a project hosted by the Centre for Sami Studies and Centre for Women´s and Gender Research at UiT, The Arctic University of Norway. The project is ongoing between the years 2021 – 2024, and aims to study gender in Sápmi on a wide scale. One aim is to review and identify research needs within Sámi gender research. Another is to support new areas of development within the field, and encourage collaborations between researchers, institutions, and relevant organizations and stakeholders in Sápmi and internationally. 

We look into existing research and explore power structures related to gender. Reciprocity, relationality, and participation are important metodological values. Gender in Sápmi needs to be studied through different methods and fields, opening for text studies, fieldwork, archive studies, and narratives, to name a few. The project has a local dimension, with the explicit connection to Sámi communities, a national dimension, meant both in an overarching Sámi context and in the Nordic contexts, and an international dimension, with the global community of Indigenous peoples and research and of gender research. 

A main aim of this project is to establish this as a field of research at UiT. Collaboration is a key to achieve this. Thus, we aim to include participants from different academic institutions and from Sámi institutions across the borders.