University of Lapland

About: University of Lapland is a education organization based out in Rovaniemi, Finland. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Arctic & Indigenous. The organization has 665 authors who have published 1870 publications receiving 39129 citations. The organization is also known as: University of Rovaniemi & Lapin yliopisto.

‘Being in Being’: Contesting the Ontopolitics of Indigeneity

Abstract: This article critiques the shift towards valorizing indigeneity in western thought and contemporary practice. This shift in approach to indigenous ways of knowing and being, historically derided under conditions of colonialism, is a reflection of the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology. Rather than indigenous peoples simply having an inferior or different understanding of the world to a modernist one, the ‘ontological turn’ suggests their importance is that they constitute different worlds, and that they ‘world’ in a performatively different way. The radical promise is that a different world already exists in potentia and that access to this alternative world is a question of ontology - of being differently: being in being rather than thinking, acting and ‘worlding’ as if we were transcendent or ‘possessive’ subjects. We argue that ontopolitical arguments for the superiority of indigenous ways of being should not be seen as radical or emancipatory resistances to modernist or colonial epistemological and ontological legacies but instead as a new form of neoliberal governmentality, cynically manipulating critical, postcolonial and ecological sensibilities for its own ends. Rather than ‘provincialising’ dominant western hegemonic practices, discourses of ‘indigeneity’ are functioning to extend them, instituting new forms of governing through calls for adaptation and resilience.

Towards meaningful simulation-based learning with medical students and junior physicians.

Abstract: Background: This research provides an educational perspective on simulation-based medical education by implementing both the characteristics of meaningful learning and the concepts of facilitating, training, and learning processes.Aims: This study aims to evaluate, from the perspectives of both facilitators and students, the meaningfulness of five different simulation-based courses.Methods: The courses were implemented in the spring of 2010. The data were collected from facilitators (n = 9) and students (n = 25) using group interviews (one individual interview), observations, video recordings, and pre- and post-questionnaires. The research analyzes qualitative data using the qualitative content analysis method to answer the following research question: From facilitators’ and students’ perspectives, how does the facilitating and training in simulation-based learning environments (SBLEs) foster the meaningful learning of students?Results: It seems that simulation-based learning is, at its foundation, meanin...

Glacier volume and area change by 2050 in high mountain Asia

Abstract: We estimate individual area and volume change by 2050 of all 67,028 glaciers, with a total area of 122,969 km2, delineated in the Randolph Glacier Inventory 2.0 of high mountain Asia (HMA). We used the 25 km resolution regional climate model RegCM 3.0 temperature and precipitation change projections forced by the IPCC A1B scenario. Glacier simulations were based on a novel surface mass balance–altitude parameterization fitted to observational data, and various volume–area scaling approaches using Shuttle Radar Topography Mission surface topography of each individual glacier. We generate mass balance–altitude relations for all the glaciers by region using nearest available glacier measurements. Equilibrium line altitude (ELA) sensitivities to temperature and precipitation change vary by region based on the relative importance of sublimation and melting processes. We also made simulations with mass balance tuned to match satellite observations of glacier thickness changes in HMA from 2003 to 2009. Net mass loss is half as much using the tuned model than using just glaciological calibration data, suggesting the representativity of benchmark glaciers is a larger source of uncertainty in future HMA contributions to sea level rise than errors in glacier inventories or volume–area scaling. Both models predict that about 35% of the glaciers in Karakoram and the northwestern Himalaya are advancing, which is consistent with the observed slight mass gain of glaciers in these regions in recent years. However, we find that 76% of all the glaciers will retreat, most of which are of the maritime type. We project total glacier area loss in high mountain Asia in 2050 to be 22% (in the tuned model) or 35% (un-tuned) of their extent in 2000, and they will contribute 5 mm (tuned model) to global sea level rise.