The MAST network takes advantage of Nordic’s leadership in knowledge production through making and the Global South experienced efforts in Indigenous perspectives to academic research.
Indigenous epistemologies and knowledges are grounded on diverse ways of knowledge production and transmission that often include specific making practices and tangible material culture. These approaches to knowing-through-making are profoundly relational, often incorporating connections with environmental knowledge as they are tied to territories and communities in complex ways that continue to be relevant today. Knowledge production through making is also dealt with in sites of contemporary western academic production. On the one hand, researchers in these traditions are increasingly collaborating with Indigenous researchers and engaging with Indigenous issues across Global North and South but lack solid frameworks for collaboration. On the other hand, Indigenous research landscapes in the Nordic region work with basic research infrastructures, are located far from main urban centers and rely on scarce resources for capacity building and mobilizing. The MAST Network benefits from contemporary global advancements in Indigenous knowking-through-making research practices, and creates North-South links able to catalyse research skills in the Nordics. During the course of two years, the MAST Network will:
Catalyze the emergence of partnering strategies that can leverage the ability to develop research that integrally accounts for both Indigenous ways of producing knowledge, and knowledge created through creative practice, aiming to harness this intersection for issues of just sustainability transformations that are relevant to the Nordic context.
Create a strong basis for future research collaboration that will allow network partners to continue collaborating, establish new research skills and methodologies and seek funding together.
This network can provide support and possibilities to, for example, articulate indigenous knowledge-through making while experimenting with sustainable digital designs based on Indigenous knowledge. Through the construction of this network we can find ethical ways that safeguard Indigenous perspectives and build trust based co-operations."
Network participants
- Assistant Professor Julia Valle Noronha, Aalto University, Finland
- Associate Professor Andrea Botero Cabrera, Aalto University, Finland
- Postdoctoral Researcher Nathaly Pinto, Aalto University, Finland
- Professor Maarit Mäkelä, Aalto University, Finland
- Postdoctoral Researcher Priska Falin, Aalto University, Finland
- Doctoral Researcher Ivan Txaparro, Aalto University, Finland
- Professor Cindy Kohtala, University of Umeå, Sweden
- Associate Professor Kasper Rodil, Aalborg University, Denmark
- Professor Gunvor Guttorm, Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Norway
- Associate Professor Hanna-Maret Outakoski, Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Norway
- Assist. Professor Prorector, Samuel Valkeapää, Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Norway
- Associate Professor Kristina Sehlin MacNeil, University of Umeå, Sweden
- Associate Professor/Director at Várdduo Christina Storm Mienna, University of Umeå, Sweden
- Associate Professor Maarit Magga , Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Norway
- Doctoral Researcher Sergio Bravo-Josephson, University of Umeå, Sweden
- Assistant Professor Petko Karadechev, Aalborg University, Denmark
- Doctoral Researcher Inga Påve Idivuoma, Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Norway