About the project:
The PhD project looks closer at the practices, technologies and material arrangements of the urban planning and development of Nuuk, the capital of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), in the period between the 1960s and 1980s. After Kalaallit Nunaat went from being a colony of Denmark to be made a county within Denmark in 1953, Danish-led processes of industrialisation and urbanisation of Kalaallit society were initiate in the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s, Kalaallit demands for increased political autonomy and independence from Denmark led to the implementation of Home Rule within the Danish Regin. This brought back political and administrative control over multiple areas of government to Kalaallit Nunaat, including urban planning.
The project investigates the political and technological-administrative practices that have shaped the city’s development and analyse these in connection to the decolonial processes and changing colonial and political-economic relations between Kalaallit Nunaat and Denmark during the period. Some of the central questions of the project concerns how the development of Nuuk has been rendered governable in this period, which technologies of politics and material arrangements that have been employed in the political and technical-administrative practices, and how, and to what extent, the shift to Home Rule changed the ways urban planning and development was conducted.
Thesis supervisors:
Main supervisor: Associate professor Tone Huse (Department of Archaeology, History, Religious Studies and Theology, UiT – the Arctic University in Norway and TIK - Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo)
Co-supervisor: Head of Institute Inge Høst Seiding (Institute of Culture, Language & History, Ilisimatusarfik – University of Greenland)
Commentators:
Head of Department Kristin Asdal (TIK - Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo)
Postdoctoral fellow Anna Andersen (Department of Archaeology, History, Religious Studies and Theology, UiT The Arctic University of Norway)
About Martin Refseth:
Martin Svingen Refseth is a PhD student at the TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University of Oslo. He is trained as an Urban Geographer and earned his master’s degree from the University of Oslo. Before joining TIK as a PhD student, Martin worked with urban planning and architecture in Oslo Municipality, first as an advisor in the Agency for Building and Planning Services and later as an urban planner in the District of Sagene.
How to participate:
The seminar is open to everyone and will be a hybrid event. Please register by sending an email to Lara Kristiansen l.b.l.kristiansen@tik.uio.no stating whether you would like to participate in person or digitally. Deadline for registration: 2 June 2023.
The manuscript is available upon request. Please send the request to to Lara Kristiansen l.b.l.kristiansen@tik.uio.no.
Welcome!