CEPIN - Citizenship, Encounters and Place Enactment in the North

CEPIN's research covers three themes/fields:

CITIZENSHIP: The questions and challenges of citizenship in an era of increasing mobilisation and multiculturalism. The rights and duties of citizenship have traditionally been tightly connected to well-defined nationality/ethnicity and nation-state borders. This has become problematic and is an important issue in the northern regions.

ENCOUNTERS: The increasing mixing and meeting - encounters - of people, artefacts, symbols, organisations and institutions from various cultural, national, ethnic and linguistic background. Our northern regions have experienced various kinds of encounters in the past, so our research agenda will include historical perspectives.

PLACE ENACTMENT: A typical trend within contemporary globalisation processes is an effort in many sites around the globe to appear unique, as especially attractive places with a striking and highly interesting identity. This phenomenon we call place enactment. It is particularly visible in tourism as efforts to promote and sell places and adventure. But it is also observable within more general public discourses on the identity and characteristics of places and is deeply connected to questions of who we are and what we will become.

Project organization: CEPIN research school is led by the following steering committee:

• Professor Anne Britt Flemmen
• Professor Willy Guneriussen (sabbatical year 2011)
• Associate Professor Siv Ellen Kraft
• Professor Einar Niemi
• Associate Professor Gry Paulgaard
• Associate Professor Jorunn Bræck Ramstad
• Research fellow Tor Ivar Hanstad
• Professor Torill Nyseth
• Professor Hallvard Tjelmeland

Head of research: in 2011 associate professor Siv Ellen Kraft