Ecological Pilgrimage: Engaging with biodiversity through walking interventions
Funded by BiodivTransform / The European Commission, the Research Council of Finland, Swedish Research Council for Environment, Agricultural Sciences and Spatial Planning (FORMAS), The Research Council of Norway (RCN), & Rannis for 2026-2029. Led by Emily Höckert, University of Lapland, Finland
With biodiversity in rapid decline, there is an urgent need to rethink and repair human–nature relationships. The project develops the concept of ‘Ecological Pilgrimage’ along four hiking trails in Norway, Iceland, Finland, and Sweden, in areas where forestry, infrastructure projects, nature conservation, tourism, agriculture, and hunting shape local ecosystems. Unlike historical colonial expeditions and religious ceremonies, Ecological Pilgrimage is understood as a form of walking that safeguards biodiversity and fosters meaningful engagement among more-than-human communities. Through national and transnational walking interventions, the research consortium brings together actors from different fields to develop creative ecological pilgrimage practices. The project broadens understanding of the role of tourism and outdoor recreation in times of ecological crisis and supports the EU Biodiversity Strategy to restore nature across Europe.
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Tourism, ruination, and regenerative futures
Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) Insight Grant for 2025-2030. Led by Bryan Grimwood, University of Waterloo, Canada
The purpose of the project is to investigate relationships between tourism and ruination, focusing on six case studies in North America where regenerative and resurgent human-environment relations are needed and being practised. The project asks: How does tourism contribute to and operate within sites of ruination? How are local communities, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, responding to ruination through regenerative and resurgent practices? How is tourism being repurposed to salvage livelihoods, economies, and cultures in damaged environments? In line with these questions, the project seeks to translate research into resources that can help resist ruination and foster regenerative and resurgent tourism imaginaries. SSHRC-funded project reimagining water and tourism: Healing landscapes marked by ruination | Water Institute | University of Waterloo
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Multispecies Hospitality – MESH
Funded by the Academy of Finland Profi7 for 2023-2028. Led by Outi Rantala, University of Lapland, Finland
MESH develops transdisciplinary hospitality research through developing multispecies approaches to sustainability issues within tourism contexts. The profiling area addresses more-than-human ethical struggles simultaneously in an attempt to attend to inequalities and injustices without putting the human at the centre stage. Rather than taking individual entities or species as units of research, multispecies research is interested in how human and nonhuman communities welcome and care for one another. Moreover, the multispecies approach sets out to disrupt the homogenising and generalising conceptions of the “Human” by emphasising the diverse ways in which human lives unfold in different situations and places. By focusing on particularities, MESH teases out how environmental impacts, risks and injustices are unequally divided between species, kinds, and regions. Importantly, the research in the project aims at enhancing curiosity and attentiveness to diverse ways of being and knowing in tourism settings – and beyond.
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Re-Imagining Tourism Economies
University of Lapland Strategic Funding for 2022–2024, led by Jarno Valkonen, University of Lapland, Finland
Re-imagining Tourism Economies forms part of the Arctic World Political Imaginations (ARCI) research stream at the University of Lapland, which grasps the escalating environmental emergency by developing alternative imaginaries for a different future. The current environmental situation indicates that the prevailing tourism paradigm, based on human exceptionalism, exclusivity, growth imperative and long-distance travel, is ill-equipped and falls short in addressing the ongoing ecological crisis. In tourism settings, this calls for disrupting, imagining and re-configuring our understandings of tourism in a way that attunes to human and non-human flourishing. Hence, the aim of this strand is to
theorise and develop the notion of multispecies tourism and its potential to work towards
more ecologically sound economic relations in the Arctic. It draws attention to existing empirical examples of tourism in the Arctic that enhance the experiential realisation of nature connectedness and relational well-being of more-than-human actors.
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Envisioning Proximity Tourism with New Materialism
Funded by the Academy of Finland for 1.9.2019-31.8.2023, led by Outi Rantala, University of Lapland, Finland
In the project, we explore possibilities of proximity Tourism in the Arctic settings; a valuable alternative for global mass tourism that emphasizes local destinations, short distances and lower-carbon transport modes travel. Our empirical work focuses on visiting forests in Finnish Lapland, especially Pyhä-Luosto national park. More specifically, we develop a methodological approach called participatory more-than-human ethnography that enables knowing with and learning from non-human-nature. The project has potential to produce significant societal effects by advocating proximity tourism as an ecologically sound form of tourism. It provides a novel narrative that is based on mutual care between humans and other earthly creatures. For tourism businesses, entrepreneurs, and policy-makers working in tourist organizations and regional councils, the project offers conceptual tools and practical examples of proximity tourism. This helps them to recognize the value of proximity tourism and to design innovative local products.
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Funded by the Research Council of Norway for 1.6.2021-30.5.2025, led by UiT – the Arctic University of Norway.
The Nordic tradition of freedom to roam in landscapes, named Allemannsretten in Norway, is increasingly contested. Small-scale farmers in Norwegian periphery landscapes feel challenged by ever more people that “invade” their outfields to do new outdoor activities. One question that surface in conflicts, is what duties towards other people and vulnerable nature that accompany the rights of Allemannsretten. To illuminate the unclear duty aspect of Allemannsretten, the LOCUS-project explores local customs, understood as an informal «law» that determines «good behaviour» within the frames of Allemannsretten.
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Mobilities on the margins – creative processes of place making (MoM)
Funded by The Icelandic Research Fund for 1.05.2020-30.04.2023, led by the University of Iceland.
This inter-disciplinary project examines how rural places often perceived at the margins, immobile and frozen in time, come into being and develop through interference of everyday mobilities and creative practices that cut across the spheres of culture and nature as usually defined. The project’s general objective is to explore two selected places in Iceland, the south-west corner of the Westfjords and Melrakkaslétta peninsula, regions considered as remote and fragile. Both are publicly perceived as having uncertain futures due to societal changes such as outmigration and decreasing role of traditional occupation in agriculture and fisheries, and thus in need of innovative solutions. In both cases tourism has come to the fore as a potential development option while other alternatives such as fish farming are also being developed.
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Slow travel in northern rural landscapes – routes for leisure biking (STIL)
Funded by InterregNord and the Regional Council of Lapland for 1.11.2020-30.09.2022, led by the Natural Resources Institute Finland, LUKE.
In the post-COVID-19 situation, it is likely that we will see an increase in domestic tourism and cross-border tourism in the Nordic countries, since the tourists will be travelling increasingly to the nearby destinations instead of long distance travelling. Thus, the importance of Nordic proximity tourism will be highlighted. In addition, tourism trends show that tourists request for activities while travelling is increasing. The project aims, firstly, at mapping the suitable routes for cycling. Secondly, the task is to create a network of businesses on the routes and, thirdly, to make the ground work for connecting to already established and easily discoverable websites and to make plans for other marketing actions of the routes.