Longyearbyen, Svalbard: Identity in Change

This practiced-based research dissertation is a study of, as well as reflection on, how we come to know something. It presents some of the artworks, articles, and other materials produced over a five year research period, along with reflections on the methodological and conceptual framings underpinning and guiding these works. It is a reflection on ways of knowing, on framing, and shows how a practice-based research—where process was the focus—led to a reflection on the production of knowledge and a questioning of our fundamental positioning as researchers within a system. This multi-layered exploration of framing is, ultimately, a study of culture: it reflects on the ways cultural frames and understandings have informed and shaped all aspects of the methods, knowledge production, and subsequent outputs produced. The issue of framing, grounded in our situated standpoints and shaped by the culture(s) we move in—which permeates all facets of culture, knowledge, and understanding—is of particular sensitivity here in the Arctic.

Housed in cultural studies, the study began by looking at various lenses through which Longyearbyen could be understood. The work eventually incorporated a wide range of methods, from the classic ethnographic work conducted from the beginning to a broadening of the visual methodologies and practice-based photography that became increasingly important. Over time, questions of framing and how that impacts the entire process from the research question, to the research methods and subsequent production(s) of knowledge, to the analysis and presentation of the research ‘findings’ became core issues to think through and with. Accordingly, the research became an exploration of ways of knowing, probing into questions about how knowledge is produced and analyzed, and how it shapes—or frames—what we understand and ‘know’.