Dr. Firouz Gaini, Professor in Anthropology at the Department of History and Social Sciences, University of the Faroe Islands, used his grant to engage in networking and planning of strategic research collaboration with anthropologists and other relevant researchers at Memorial University, Newfoundland & Labrador, (Atlantic) Canada. It allowed him to explore and bridge research ventures focusing on questions related these interrelated themes: everyday life in island and coastal communities, transformed fisheries and gender identities (masculinities), and local and knowledge and intergenerational relations.
Gaini gave a lecture and participated in meetings and seminars with scholars and graduate and postgraduate students, as well as practitioners, at the university during his extensive visit in October 2019. His lecture, titled ‘Young People, Place and Intergenerational Relations in a Coastal Community in the Faroes’ presented results from an international project in progress. Professor Sharon Roseman, Gaini’s main contact person at Memorial University, an anthropologist and specialist in Atlantic Studies, helped him organize meetings with the Head of the Department of Anthropology, the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, the Internationalization Office, people from the Ocean Frontier Institute (OFI), the Academic Editor of ISER Books, etc. Gaini also had time to visit museums and archives in St. John’s, including the impressive Maritime History Archive at Memorial University.
Gaini’s visit to Memorial University was very successful and resulted in new connections and strategies for future student and staff exchange between these two North Atlantic universities. The UArctic north2north grant gave him a unique opportunity to expand his network, to discuss and generate ideas for collaboration, and to get inspiration and new knowledge from excellent scholars working with research projects with close thematic bonds to Gaini’s own research.