Dr. Anna Andersen (Afanasyeva) is a Sámi historian and Postdoctoral Fellow at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. She holds PhD in History and MA degree in Indigenous studies from the same university.

Anna is a Kildin Sámi researcher and historian, with her roots from a Sámi family that was relocated from the Ársjogk area of the Kola Peninsula, Eastern Sápmi. From 2010 to 2013 she conducted research in the Sámi communities on the forced resettlements of her people from their traditional territories in the 1950’s and the 1960’s. Later, from 2014 to 2019, she studied experiences of three generations of Sámi who resided at the boarding schools.

Anna is currently residing in Nuuk, where she is a visiting scholar at Ilisimatusarfik. She is also employed at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, where she is part of the research project Urban Transformation in a Warming Arctic. As part of this project, Anna hopes to conduct an international study on relocations of the Sámi and the Greenlandic people in the 1950’s and the 1960’s.

Anna will discuss her previous work and experiences, as well as her plans about research on how resettlement and urban development has been experienced in Greenland. She will share her experiences of being an indigenous person from a relocated family, about her work as indigenous historian and motivation for doing historical research on resettlements in indigenous lands. Anna will present the results of her research on relocations of the Sámi people.

By giving this public lecture, Anna invites to public discussion about centralization policies that can lay a foundation for research together with Inuit communities and scholars.

This lecture will be a starting point for her research on relocations in Greenland that includes analysis of archival materials together with traditional indigenous storytelling about closed Inuit villages.