Kirsten Thisted

Short presentation

Primary fields of research

My focus is minority majority relations, including postcolonial relations. I am particularly interested in how such asymmetric power relations are negotiated through literary and other aesthetic expressions. My regional competence is Greenland / Scandinavia.

Keywords for research and supervision: Narratives / discourses about (collective) identities and affiliation, Emotional communities, Linguistic and Cultural Encounters, Cultural Translation, Postcolonial Relations, Denmark-Greenland relations, Greenlandic literature, media and film, "The Foreigner" in Danish / Scandinavian Literature.

Current research:

Denmark and the New North Atlantic

I am heading an interdisciplinary research program that concerns the renegotiations of identities that are taking place in all parts of the North Atlantic in these years, as a result of independence processes, climate change and globalization. The project revisits the joint history of Denmark and Iceland, Greenland and the Faroe Islands, and examins the current efforts to create a new, strong brand for the North Atlantic region, a Scandinavian Arctic. The project is funded by the Carlsberg Foundation.

Please visit: http://tors.ku.dk/forskning/forskningpaafagene/minoritetsstudier/denmarkandthenewnorthatlantic/

and

thenewnorthatlantic.com 

Affective economies: How are places, communities and identities constructed?

I am the head of this research task, which is a part of the Centre of Excellence for Resources, Extractive Industries and Sustainable Arctic Communities (REXSAC), funded by NORDFORSK

Please visit https://www.rexsac.org/about/ and https://www.rexsac.org/research/

Recently completed projects:

I was a partner in the POSUSA (Politics of Postcoloniality and Sustainability in the Arctic) project. Funded by the Velux Foundations.

Publikation: K. Thisted: ‘How we use our nature.’ Sustainability and Indigeneity in Greenlandic Discourse. In: Gad UP & Strandsbjerg J (eds) 2018: The Politics of Sustainability in the Arctic. Reconfiguring identity, time and space, Routledge (Routledge Studies in Sustainability)

Partner in The Sámi Art Research Project (SARP), funded by The Research Council of Norway and the Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, University of Tromsø.

Publikation: K. Thisted: Blubber Poetics: Emotional Economies and Post-Postcolonial Identities in Contemporary Greenlandic Art and Literature. In Aarnold Svein; Elin Haugdal; Ulla Angkjær Jørgensen (eds.) 2017: Sámi Art and Aestetics. Contemporary Perspectives, Aarhus Universitetsforlag, 267-297. 

Partner in the Arctic Modernities project, funded by The Research Council of Norway. 

Publikation: ‘A Place in the Sun’: Historical Perspectives on the Debate on Development and Modernity in Greenland. In: Heidi Hansson and Anka Ryall (eds.) 2017: Arctic Modernities: The Environmental, the Exotic and the Everyday. Cambridge Scholars Press, 312-344.

CV

Employments:

1988–1990: Postgraduate Fellow at the Institute of Nordic Philology, University of Copenhagen.

1990-1993: Assistant Professor at the Institute of Greenlandic, Ilisimatusarfik/University of Greenland.    

1993-1994: External lecturer at the Minority Studies Section, Institute of Nordic Philology, University of Copenhagen.

1994-1996: Research fellowat theInstitute of Nordic Philology, University of Copenhagen.  

1997–2001: Assistant professor at the Minority Studies Section, Institute of Nordic Philology, University of Copenhagen.

2002 - : Associate professor at the Minority Studies Section, Institute of Nordic Philology, University of Copenhagen. In 2005 the department moved to the Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies.

2009: Fulbright Professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Scholarships, individual and collective research projects  

• 1994-1996:  From oral tradition to written literature. 3 year scholarship from the Carlsberg Foundation in order to study and edit parts of the Rink collection at the Royal Library in Copenhagen.   
• 1993-96: Publication of the Rink texts funded by the Carlsberg Foundation and KVUG (Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland).  
• 2002-2003: As blubber and water? Mutual interpretations of the cultural encounter between Denmark and Greenland. 2 year scholarship funded by the Danish Research Committee.
• 2006-2009 Arctic Discourses. A project with active participants from Tromsø University, Umeå University, University of Copenhagen, Amsterdam University, Vienna Museum and University College, London.
• 2006-2009: The Urban Greenland. Movements, Narratives, Creativity.  Research project at ToRS, Copenhagen University. Funded by The Danish Research Council for Humanities.
• 2007-2010 From Oral Tradition to Rap. Literatures of the Polar North. IPY (International Polar Year) project. A collaboration of researchers from Greenland, Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Norway, Canada, Great Britain and Alaska.
• 2007: Tranquebar in Danish Representation The Danish National Museum’s Tranquebar initiative. Funded by Bikubenfonden. 
• 2009: Fulbright Scholarship For Visiting Professors. 
• 2009-2010: Cosmopolitanism, Post-Nationalism And The Cultural Self In Recent Nordic Literature And Culture. A collaboration of literary scholars from Norway, Sweden and Denmark. Funded by the Research Council of Norway.
• 2009-2013 SARP (The Sámi Art Research Project), Funded by The Research Council of Norway and the Faculty of Humanities, Social Sciences and Education, University of Tromsø.
• 2012-2016 Leader of the international research project Denmark and the New North Atlantic.
• 2016- Project participant in the “Centre of Excellence for Resources, Extractive Industries and Sustainable Arctic Communities (REXSAC)”
• 2016- Project participant in ”Politics of Postcoloniality and Sustainability in the Arctic (POSUSA)”

Recent participation in networks 

• DINO. Diversity in Nordic Literature
• Network for Migration and Culture: The Interrelations of Migration, Culture and     Aesthetics.
• Northern Research Network

Guest lectures

Guest lectures held at Danish, Nordic, European, American and Australian universities; including Roskilde, Aalborg, Odense, Kolding, Uppsala, Stockholm, Tromsø, Nuuk, Reykiavik, Edinburgh, Hamburg, Bonn, Bochum, Münster, Greifswald, Basel, Berlin, Bologna, Madison, Berkeley, UCLA, Minneapolis, Canberra.