Associate Professor in Sámi Studies and Nordic Folkloristics specializing in Minority Studies.
Coppélie Cocq, Associate Professor in Sami Studies at Umeå University and Associate Professor in Nordic Folkloristics, especially minority studies at Åbo Akademi University. From January 2019 she is on leave of absence from Umeå University and is employed at the University of Helsinki as Professor of Ethnology (coppelie.cocq@helsinki.fi).
Coppélie has a Ph.D. in the Sami Studies 2008 with the thesis Revoicing Sámi narratives. North Sámi storytelling at the turn of the 20th century (Sámi Dutkan, Umeå University).
She conducts research within the focus area of digital practices. Her research interests are cultural forms of expression, storytelling and narrative (from oral to digital) as well as critical studies in minority and indigenous research. Ethical and methodological perspectives on digital ethnography are other topical issues in her research.
Current research projects
- The language of place-making. A mixed-method analysis of the linguistic landscapes (FORMAS, 2019-2021)
The project focuses on linguistic landscapes (languages on signs etc.) in Norrland. The purpose is to investigate how languages as they materialize in our environment contribute to creating public spaces. With the help of qualitative and quantitative methods, we describe and analyze which languages are visible and which are not, and relate these results to demographic, socio-economic and spatial characteristics in different places. This will enable us to understand how urban and rural environments are created with the help of majority, indigenous and minority languages.
- The Societal Dimensions of Sámi Research (The Research Council of Norway, 2018-2019)
This project is funded by the Research Council of Norway and is based at Tromsø University. It examines the social conditions that framed the production of academic knowledge during different periods. The research group is interdisciplinary and focuses on research and societal relations in the Nordic countries from the Lappology time to the present.
Within the framework of this project, Coppélie is studying contemporary conditions for Sami research in today's society with particular focus on the digital media landscape, on the one hand, and the development of the field of indigenous research on the other.
- DISLIFE Liveable disabilities: Life courses and opportunity structures across time (ERC, 2017-2018)
Coppélie's research examines the use of social media and its role for people with disabilities, eg. for activism, self-representation and negotiation of authority.
- iAccept: Soft surveillance – between acceptance and resistance (The Foundation Marcus and Amalia Wallenberg's Memorial Fund, 2018-2020)
Within this project, Coppélie investigates how surveillance is perceived by the public and various practices linked to monitoring.
Selection of completed projects:
- Production and mediation of indigenous knowledge: oral and mediated strategies for expressing Sami identities (FORMAS 2013-2016).
In this project, Coppélie Cocq has investigated the role of the internet and digital technology for the production and communication of knowledge. Thanks to the internet, the opportunities for indigenous peoples to communicate and express their culture have increased significantly. Many stories get a spread far beyond what was previously possible. Digital tools for producing and reproducing folkloric genres provide increased opportunities for the creation of new traditions and new interpretations.
- In the Humlab project Media Places, Coppélie Cocq studied Sami digital environments and the interaction between online and offline cultural forms of expression. Learn more at: challengingtraditions.wordpress.com/my-research-project/
- During the period 2012-2014, she worked on a project on stories about nature, Nature Narrated. A Study of Oral Narratives about Environmental and Natural Disasters from a Folkloristic and Linguistic Ethnographic Perspective (financed by The Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences). This study contributes to today's environmental debate with a different perspective, where traditional knowledge is in focus. The project adds a comparative perspective in which different population groups are allowed to speak and focus on the human and her meaning-creating strategies.
