NEWS Caroline Hervé, a guest researcher at Várdduo - Centre for Sámi Research, is investigating historical and contemporary relationships between government institutions and Inuit communities in Nunavik, northern Canada. Public services such as policing, the courts, healthcare, and social services are examined as key sites where bureaucratic logics intersect with Inuit ways of being in the world.
Guest researcher Caroline Hervé from Université Laval (Québec, Canada).
ImageLinnéa Tjernström– My research gives particular attention to the role of cultural mediators, as well as to subtle, everyday strategies of adaptation and resistance. More broadly, the research explores how the state is experienced and negotiated in daily life in Inuit Nunavik.
On 19 May, Caroline Hervé presented her research during a seminar titled Everyday Colonialism: Inuit Lives and the Ordinary Work of the State in Nunavik (Canadian Arctic). The seminar was co-organised by Várdduo - Centre for Sámi Research, Humlab and the Department of Language Studies, all of which are part of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities.
– The visit offered valuable opportunities to exchange ideas with researchers and students at Várdduo and across Umeå University. I hope that these exchanges, both formal and informal, will encourage intellectual dialogue and facilitate long-term scholarly connections between Université Laval, Várdduo, and Umeå University.
Caroline Hervé is an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at Université Laval (Canada). She also holds the Research Chair on Relations with Inuit Societies, through which she seeks to generate new knowledge about the history and social dynamics of Inuit societies, develop training and educational tools for non-Inuit, and give Inuit a central role in research production.
She specializes in political anthropology and analyzes the ontological dimensions of intercultural encounters in contexts marked by colonial relations. She is the author of the book Le pouvoir vient d'ailleurs. Leadership et coopération chez les Inuit du Nunavik (PUL, 2015) and several scientific articles. She is a member of the Interuniversity Center for Indigenous Studies and Research (Université Laval) and the Institut nordique du Québec. She is also the editor of the international journal Études Inuit Studies.