What makes a good question? A Socratic workshop
This session invites participants to sit with a deceptively simple question: what makes a question good? Rather than treating enquiry as a tool for extracting answers, we will explore questioning as a practice in its own right: one that can open rather than close, and unsettle rather than resolve. Drawing on the Socratic tradition of dialogue and structured probing, we will practise questioning assumptions, evidence and viewpoints together, while resisting the pull towards premature answers. The aim is not mastery of a technique, but the cultivation of a disposition: remaining curious, comfortable with not knowing, and attentive to how a question is framed as much as to what it seeks. Drawing on the Books of Questions practice, participants will leave with questions rather than conclusions.
Archaeology in action
Archaeology is a discipline of intersections. Its engagement with material culture, from tiny artefacts to whole landscapes, means that it draws on methods from the natural sciences, social sciences and humanities. Because material remains are both anthropogenic and natural, archaeologists study the present and recent past alongside the deep past. Three workstations in our laboratory on the UiT campus put this into practice: objects from a Second World War prisoner-of-war camp in Finnmark; Sámi, Kven and Norwegian artefacts; and a live demonstration of XRF analysis or other research techniques.
Co-creative object handling: Do You See What I See?
This object-handling session will focus on objects from the Sámi Collection at the Arctic University Museum. We will follow the manual Do You See What I See?, developed by UiT’s Centre for Arctic Humanities in collaboration with the Museum of Artistic Process at Lund University. The purpose is to learn from one another and create new ideas, knowledge and evidence through interaction and collaboration across different research fields, ages, genders, backgrounds and ways of knowing.
Walking into questions
What happens when we walk not to arrive, but to wonder? In this session, we take our Books of Questions outdoors. Moving slowly and attentively through a mix of spaces—shorelines, streets, buildings, places of gathering and places of memory—we let the place itself speak to us. Rather than seeking answers or explanations, we practise noticing: What puzzles you here? What did you expect, and what unsettles that expectation? What question could only be asked here? The Question Walk is inspired by the soundwalks developed by the research project Arctic Auditories: Hydrospheres in the High North, and by CRAFT Research Lab’s activity, Walking with the Arctic: From Now to Next, implemented with international students in September 2025 in Cambridge Bay/Iqaluktuuttiaq, Nunavut, Canada, as part of the Arctic Future Pathfinders course.
UiT’s historical map collection
UiT’s historical map collection consists of more than 150 rare maps depicting the High North and the Arctic, dating from as early as 1482 to the 1800s. Most of the maps were acquired from a private collection housed in a deconsecrated church in the small, remote fishing village of Gjesvær, near the North Cape. Together, we will explore the potential, possibilities and limitations of using digitised versions of historical maps of the Arctic in research and outreach activities.
Day trip to the fjords
Weather and technology permitting, we will embark on a biological field trip to the sheltered waters of the sound in which Tromsø Island lies, and to the neighbouring Balsfjord. Using a variety of methods, we will dive into and explore the fascinating creatures that inhabit these waters. We will learn how organisms with bones, eyes and tentacles thrive, and how others manage to live just as well without them, while interacting to form communities and ecosystems. Between stops, we will make time for stories and tall tales about fishing, as well as informal conversations about how food, wood, films and other things can spark creative ideas.