"My name is Maria Fedina, I am a doctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland. I am primarily affiliated with Indigenous studies group; additionally, I possess affiliations with Urbaria (Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Studies) and INEQ (Helsinki Inequality Initiative) at the University of Helsinki. In my doctoral dissertation I explore urban Indigenous experiences. Particularly, I am interested in placemaking practices, belonging, people-place relations, urban-rural dichotomies, human-environment relations in urban areas, and language sustainability. I do my research with urban-dwelling Komi people from Syktyvkar, Komi Republic, Russia, where I myself was born and raised.
Arctic Congress was this year’s biggest academic event for scholars doing research in the Arctic and the North. Attending it was a great opportunity to get acquainted with recent research and disciplinary challenges and to network with scholars at different stages of their careers. I presented my own research as well: I gave an oral presentation titled Being urban Komi: navigating connections to places, environments, and people at the session 4.1.6 Living in and with changing Arctic landscape(s): revisiting human and non-human entanglements in a time of flux.
Receiving a travel grant to attend the Congress was invaluable. Travel and accommodation costs in Norway are known to be high, and I indeed wouldn’t be able to cover such costs by myself alone. Attending the Congress, I aimed not only to network with people from my own or related disciplines but also to attend sessions hosted by other disciplines. As a result of this decision, I got to know several research projects and researchers, whose spheres of academic interests resemble mine a lot, despite disciplinary variations. We exchanged contact information and agreed to continue our conversation in post-congress settings. Undoubtedly, I wouldn’t be able to acquire such contacts without attending the Congress". (c) Maria Fedina