Dec 3, 2024: InfraNorth Participation at the 6th Nordic Conference for Rural Research
Two members of the InfraNorth team, Timothy Heleniak (a senior research fellow at Nordregio) and Ria-Maria Adams, will participate in the 6th Nordic Rural Research Conference, held in Kiruna, Finland, from December 3-5. This year’s conference theme is “New Pathways to Sustainable Transitions?”
Timothy Heleniak is coordinating working group 1.1, “The benefits of migration in Nordic rural areas,” which will gather on Tuesday, December 3, at 15:30 EET. The group will bring together researchers investigating mobility in rural areas, including internal and international migration, to explore its potential for rural development policies in the Nordic region.
On Wednesday, December 4, at 13:00 EET, Ria-Maria Adams will present the paper “Capitalizing stigma: Counter-narrating regional decline through local initiatives within Finland’s fastest shrinking town,” as part of working group 3.2.1, “Local communities as main actors in rural change.” Her presentation is based on a forthcoming article she is part of led by Grete Gansauer and co-authored by Johanna Lilius for the journal Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space. They examine how local initiatives in ‘left behind’ places can transform broader political discourses of decline. The study explores how local initiatives challenge stigmatizing discourses and discusses the groundwork for a re-imagined ‘politics of possibility’ for seemingly hopeless places with sparse (transport) infrastructure connections.
The full conference program is available online through this link.
