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The Research Group on Comparative Indigeneity is an interdisciplinary group of scholars based in the Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences, and Education at the University of Tromsø. Our goal is to provide a forum where scholars, students, and community members can share their research results and ideas with each other. The theme ‘comparative indigeneity’ is defined broadly. We welcome the participation of anyone with a primary research interest in communities that can be defined as ‘indigenous’, or who is interested in the relation between indigenous peoples and the state. We welcome a critical engagement with the term and we encourage comparison across post-colonial domains and across borders.
The core of the group is made up of professors, post-doctoral fellows and PhD students in the Section for Anthropology within the Department of Social Sciences. We have research projects across the globe, with particular strengths in Subsaharan and Southern Africa, the Pacific, Central and South America, and in the circumpolar Arctic, including the Russian Federation. Theoretically, the group has focused its effort on processes of identity articulation, the connection between landscape and indigenous peoples,and legal and political expression of aboriginal rights. This research theme has been developed over the past decades, and was recognised by the Faculty in June 2010 as a research group.
The primary responsibilities of the research group are to organise a regular seminar where new research is presented, to invite accomplished international scholars to the university, to make links with similar groups worldwide, and to co-ordinate efforts to develop projects and attract external funding.