Panel Discussions

Panel chair

Michael Jones (Norwegian University of Science and Technology)

Panel description:

The panel will discuss recent research on the history of cartography in Norden and identify gaps in current knowledge where further research might be encouraged. Examples of topics where more research might be undertaken include women in cartography, indigenous cartography (in the Nordic context Sámi cartography), cartography of multicultural places, and colonial cartography (Danish or Swedish colonies in North America, the West Indies, West Africa and India). Also of particular interest are recent theoretical and methodological developments in cartographical history, for example maps as expressions of power, the historical-geographical context of mapmaking, cartography as cultural practice, and the history of cartography in the digital era. Other topics are also relevant.

The point of departure is a recent revival of interest in the history of cartography of the Nordic countries, seen in books and articles published in recent years both in the Nordic languages and in English. Nordic cartographers and cartographical topics are also referred to in recently published volumes of The History of Cartography (University of Chicago Press), vol. 4 Cartography in the European Enlightenment (2020) and volume 6 Cartography in the Twentieth Century (2015).

This panel session is organized on behalf of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography, which has recently published special issues containing articles on the history of cartography of the Nordic countries.

Panellists

Kimmo Katajala, Professor of History at the Department of Geographical and Historical Studies, University of Eastern Finland, Joensuu, and Adjunct Professor in History at Tampere University. His research interests include cartography and state-building in the early modern period, historical urban cartography, and the use of geoinformatics to analyse historical cartographical and spatial data.

Anne C. Lien, Head of Vestland County Mapping Office, Norwegian Mapping Authority, and Ph.D. candidate at the Department of Geography, University of Bergen. Her doctoral thesis work consists of an analysis of Norwegian historical maps in relation to political and other motives behind their construction, with a focus on border regions and trans-border cartography.

Stig Roar Svenningsen, Senior Researcher, Special Collections Department, Royal Library, Copenhagen. His research interests include historical military cartography, cadastral cartography, environmental cartography, and the use of historical maps and aerial photographs for mapping landscape change.

Anders Wästfelt, Professor of Geography at the Department of Human Geography, University of Stockholm. His research interests include agricultural mapping, remote sensing, and the use of GIS to analyse historical maps. His recent research consists of micro-scale space-time analysis of historical farming systems using historical maps and GIS. He is also interested in different forms of representation on maps and their disciplining aims and effects.

The panel will be followed by a small reception sponsored by Taylor & Francis, the publisher of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography, to which attendants of the panel are invited.

Panel organizers:

Edward H. Huijbens  (Wageningen University & Research)

Dimitri Ioannides (Mid-Sweden University)

Panel chair(s):

Anniken Førde (UiT The Arctic University of Norway)

Dieter K. Müller (Umeå University)

Gunnar Thor Jóhannesson (University of Iceland)

Jarkko Saarinen (Oulu University)

Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt (Roskilde University)

Panel description:

The organizers invite all interested to a session to interrogate the current state and to date contributions of Nordic tourism geography. Tourism studies is by now an established field of research in all the Nordic countries and world-wide. Several fields of inquiry have emerged within tourism studies globally and this session will ask what and how Nordic geography scholarship has contributed.

The emerging themes and findings of the session will be summarized by a designated secretary and published by the session organizers in a Nordic journal of tourism and/or geography.

Panel organizers/chairs:

Peter Jakobsen, Uppsala University; Erik Jönsson, Uppsala University; Henrik Gutzon Larsen, Lund University.

Panel description:

Based in a forthcoming edited volume on socio-spatial theory in Nordic geography, this series of three panel discussions will engage with various prominent themes within, and beyond, the geography discipline in the Nordic countries.

The first two panels are built around shorter presentations of book chapters and discussions with and between the chapter authors. The series of panel sessions is thereafter concluded with a more interactive discussion on the current shape and intended purpose of the Geography discipline in Norden. Drawing together scholars from Norway, Denmark, Finland and Sweden the panels should together allow for a vibrant discussion on the past, present, and possible future state of Nordic geography, and how space is made sense of within various sub-disciplines therein.

Part 1:

Chair: Henrik Gutzon Larsen, Lund University

Panelists:

• Jouni Häkli, Tampere University
• Marcus Mohall & Pär Wikman; Uppsala University
• Dieter K. Müller, Umeå University
• Anssi Paasi; University of Oulu
• Kirsten Simonsen; Roskilde University

Part 2:

Chair: Erik Jönsson, Uppsala University

Panelists:

• Peter Jakobsen; Uppsala University
• Erik Jönsson; Uppsala University
• Henrik Gutzon Larsen; Lund University
• Ari Lehtinen; University of Eastern Finland

Part 3:

Chair: Peter Jakobsen, Uppsala University

Open discussion with panelists and guests on socio-spatial theory in Nordic Geography.

Panelist biographies:

Jouni Häkli, Tampere University

Jouni Häkli is Professor or Regional Studies and the leader of the Space and Political Agency Research Group (SPARG) at Tampere University. His research lies at the intersection of political geography and global and transnational sociology, with focus on the study of political subjectivity and agency, urban planning and civic participation, borders and national identities, and forced migration. In his recent work he has been particularly interested in the political agency of people in vulnerable positions.

Peter Jakobsen, Uppsala University

Peter Jakobsen is a PhD student in human geography at Uppsala University. He has previously taught at Aalborg University. His current research is about the development and evolution of radical geographical thought in Denmark and the connections between the histories of radical geography in the Nordic countries.

Erik Jönsson, Uppsala University

Erik Jönsson is an Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala University, with a PhD from Lund University. From 2018 to 2021 he was employed at Uppsala University’s Campus Gotland. A political ecologist, he has in his research explored the political role of future visions in relation to both large-scale planning projects and the possible development of novel biotechnologies. He is also involved in historical landscape geography, scrutinising the role of the People’s Parks for the emergence of the labour movement in Sweden.

Henrik Gutzon Larsen, Lund University

Henrik Gutzon Larsen is a human geographer educated at Copenhagen University. He teaches human geography at Lund University. Before coming to Lund, in 2013, he taught geography at the universities in Copenhagen, Roskilde and Aalborg. His current research addresses urban geography and housing, political geography and history of geographic thought.

Ari A. Lehtinen, University of Eastern Finland

Ari Aukusti Lehtinen is Professor of Geography at the University of Eastern Finland. He has specialised in Arctic and Boreal development issues, notably in industrial extraction, socio-environmental injustices and politics of degrowth. His research work has evolved in the form of collective civic action projects linked, for example, to urban renewal, organic farming, forest-based development, wilderness conservation, Biosphere cooperation and Greenbelt promotion.

Marcus Mohall, Uppsala University

Marcus Mohall is a researcher based at the the Institute for Housing and Urban Research and the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala University. His research interests primarily revolve around the political economy of public transportation and housing, and the history of geographical thought

Dieter K. Müller, Umeå University

Dieter K. Müller has a PhD from Umeå University, where he now is a professor of human geography. Dieter’s research interest is in tourism geographies specifically including almost all aspects of second homes and second home–related mobility, Sami tourism, nature-based tourism, tourism labor markets, regional development, and rural change, particularly in Northern peripheries and Polar areas. More recently, he has also published on tourism geographies and their relations to mainstream geographies. Dieter has been the chairperson of the International Geographical Union (IGU) Commission for the Geography of Tourism, Leisure and Global Change (2012–2020), and besides serving on the editorial boards of Tourism Geographies, Current Issues in Tourism, and the Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality and Tourism, he is one of the founding co-editors of the Springer book series Geographies of Tourism and Global Change.

Anssi Paasi, University of Oulu

Anssi Paasi has been Professor of Geography at the University of Oulu, Finland, since 1989. He has published widely on spatial/political geographic theory, concepts and processes in geographical and political science journals, and edited collections. He is also interested in power-knowledge relations in the contemporary neoliberal academy. He is the author of Territories, Boundaries and Consciousness (John Wiley & Sons 1996). His most recent co-edited books are Handbook on the Geographies of Regions and Territories (Elgar 2018) and Borderless Worlds for Whom? Ethics, Moralities and Mobilities (Routledge 2019).

Kirsten Simonsen, Roskilde University

Kirsten Simonsen is Professor in Social and Cultural Geography at the Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Denmark. Her research concerns issues of philosophy of geography, Nordic geography, spatial conceptualizations, urban theory and everyday practices, and the living of racialized Others in contemporary European cities.

Pär Wikman, Uppsala University

Pär Wikman is a researcher at the Department of Economic History at Uppsala University. His research interests include the history of the social sciences and modern political history. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the relationship between regional planning and human geography in Sweden.