NORMED Seminars

Mogens Pelt | Associate Professor in International History, The Saxo Institute, University of Copenhagen

“Becoming small: the case of Denmark and the Imperative of the Regional (1814-1945)”

Discussant

Ada Dialla, Professor of Modern and Contemporary European History, Department of Art Theory and History, Athens School of Fine Arts | President of the Executive Administrative Board, RCH

Abstract

It is easy to get the impression that small states are “small by nature” and that we need to focus on the primate of smallness to understand the constraints placed upon them and the room of manoeuvre which they use to navigate in the game among nations.Instead this lecture will discuss the process by which Denmark became small and how that forced her to reinvent her place among nations and how it shaped the norms that came to form the political culture of that country.

Speaker’s CV

Mogens Pelt Ph.D et Dr.Phil. is Associate Professor in International History at the History Section at the Saxo-Institute, University of Copenhagen. He was the Director of the Danish Institute at Athens 2020 to 2024; he is directing the research project The Greek Revolution and European Republicanism, 1815-1830: Ideas of Nation, People and Citizenship in the Making of the Constitutional State (Independent Research Fund Denmark); co-director with Professor Catharina Raudvere at the Centre ‘Many Roads in Modernity: South-eastern Europe and its Ottoman Roots’, University of Copenhagen (Carlsberg Foundation); member of directing board of Centre of the Study of Nationalism University of Copenhagen). He was a Stanley J. Seeger Fellow at the Program in Hellenic Studies, Princeton University 2008-9, attached to the Commission established by the Danish Parliament to Investigate the Danish Security Intelligence Service 2007-8; a researcher in the project Captive States, Divided Societies, Political Institutions of Southeastern Europe in Historical Comparative Perspective (Volkswagen Foundation);  a visiting Fellow at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University in 1999 and Deputy-director at the Danish Institute at Athens, 1993-96.

Download this seminar’s program here.

Apostolos Tsiouvalas | Research Fellow, PhD Candidate, Norwegian Centre for Law of the Sea (NCLOS), Faculty of Law, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway.

“Small States and Kinopolitical Power at Sea: Taming Nomadic Forces from Greenland to Greece”

Discussant

George Kalpadakis | Senior Researcher, Modern Greek History Research Centre (KEINE), Academy of Athens

Abstract

Under international law of the sea, the concept of ‘state sovereignty’ defines all relationships in the ocean space and serves as the fundamental tool to control mobilities and exercise jurisdiction over movement, often framed as the ‘kinopolitical power of the state’. Small states emphatically wield kinopolitical power to diminish any non-state mobilities and consolidate their position in the international arena. To examine the interplay between non-state mobilities (nomadic forces) at sea, which often challenge existing territorial assumptions, and the exercise of kinopolitical power by small states, this presentation delves into two examples. First, it draws insights from the way control over movement is wielded by a small Inuit nation striving for decolonization, Greenland, over its distinct Indigenous nomadic subgroups, by confining them within a delineated territory and implementing certain resource management mechanisms. Subsequently, examining migration policies and violent practices at sea, it shows how Greece, under the same territorial rationale, seeks to assert kinopolitical power in the Mediterranean Sea and control any non-state movement. Through these examples, this presentation highlights how sovereign territorial logics not only impose a singular spatiolegal architecture for the world’s oceans but also silence distinct ontologies of movement embedded in Indigenous, migrant, or other non-state jurisdictions in the ocean space.

Speaker’s CV

Apostolos Tsiouvalas is a PhD Research Fellow at the Norwegian Centre for Law of the Sea (NCLOS) at UiT – The Arctic University of Norway in Tromsø. Apostolos is also a Research Associate at The Arctic Institute – Center for Circumpolar Security Studies, a think tank and registered 501c3 nonprofit organisation based in Washington D.C., U.S.A and board member of the Hellenic Polar Zones Society (ELEPOZ). Apostolos holds an LL.M. degree in Polar Law from the University of Akureyri in Iceland, an MPhil degree in Indigenous Studies from UiT The Arctic University of Norway, and a BA degree in Law from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece. Apostolos’ main research interests revolve around legal anthropology, new materialism(s), legal pluralism, indigenous rights and environmental law in the Arctic. His doctoral project is critically exploring Law of the Sea’s understanding of motion in the world’s oceans as an artifact of legal modernity and seeks to revisit it in light of premodern theorizations of motion and legal anthropological research with Arctic Indigenous communities. Throughout his PhD studies, Apostolos has been awarded fully-funded fellowships at various institutions, including the Federal Rural University of Rio de Janeiro in Brazil, Ilisimatusarfik – the University of Greenland, the Polar Cooperation Research Centre in Kobe, Japan, and the Sustainable Ocean Alliance Fellowship program in Panama City, Panama. In 2022, Apostolos was honored with an award from the French Institute of Norway as the best early-career scholar in Norway focusing on ocean research, followed by research mobilities in Brest and Paris, France.

Download this seminar’s program here.

Roundtable Discussion: “Stories of overlooked heritage in the making of small states”

Anne-Helen Mydland | Professor, The Art Academy – Department of Contemporary Art, University of Bergen

Delia Tzortzaki | Adviser/Researcher and Legal Representative, Norwegian Institute at Athens

Discussant

Kallirroe Linardou | Assistant Professor in Byzantine and Medieval Art, Department of Art Theory & History, Athens School of Fine Arts | Member of the Executive Administrative Board, RCH

Abstract

While research on geopolitics focuses on the making of small peripheral states in connection with larger nations and scheme of events, inquiry on the concept of small states can also take the opposite route. It can namely turn inwards, by clinging on to the insignificant, the micro-context, the ignored, the “brushed aside”, such as overlooked industrial cultural heritage -once the source of pride and income for various social groups in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. Family stories and memories reveal smaller or larger sections of the dense historical narratives that connect the personal to the bigger picture of the state and its socioeconomic and political presence. Those sections, as fragmented as they might be, are worth exploring. Smallness thus refers to scale, significance, visibility, locality and takes “intimacy” as its methodological tool.

Delia Tzortzaki shifts the attention to fairly unknown textile factories and their more personal stories and engages in field (archival, in situ and ethnographic) research of selected places in Greece (Pireus and Volos) while suggesting collaborative work with Norwegian counterparts exploring similar fields of textile / industrial heritage studies. Anne Helen Mydland looks at smallness from an artistic research perspective. Through the lense of Rhopograpy (Bryson, 1990) she examines the overlooked stories, histories and social narratives of ‘smallness’ with emphasis on ceramics. Mydland’s artistic research is questioning the object’s role, status and value. Methodically juxtaposing the objects’ private and public history, different hierarchies of value and class become visible. In her extensive collaborative artistic work at the Spode Factory in Stock on Trent (UK), Mydland sets out to feel and express the empty shell of the factory, this post-industrial “landscape of absence” by turning the gaze towards the “obsolete” and its potentiality for the future. In the final part, the presentation will focus on issues of methodology and structure regarding the NORMED project Small States in the Making. The Nordic and Mediterranean Regions.

Speakers’ CVs

Anne-Helen Mydland is a professor in Fine Art with specialization in Ceramics and Clay. After her studies at the University of Bergen (archaeology and art history) and at Bergen National Academy of Art (Ceramics), she established her career as an artist, curator, educator and researcher. She has a longstanding engagement with artistic research both nationally and internationally. As a researcher Mydland was the initiator and leader of the artistic research project ‘Topographies of the Obsolete 2013-2017(financed by NARP) and part of the EU/Erasmus funded ‘Advancing Supervision for Doctorates in the Arts’ heading the WP on Ethics.  She has been Vice-dean of Research, Faculty of Fine Art, Music and Design, UiB (2018-2022) establishing the UiBs ph.d program in Artistic Research, and part of the National Artistic Research Schools board. She instigated and led the first work on establishing national research ethical guidelines for Artistic Research in Norway. She has held several positions as research and ph.d leader at the Art Academy (KMD/KHiB). Mydland is a member of ELIAs Working Group for Artistic Research.

Delia Tzortzaki is Adviser and Researcher at the Norwegian Institute at Athens / University of Bergen, and since 2021 she is also the Legal Representative and Head of the Institute. Delia holds a Ph.D. in Museology (Roskilde University, Denmark, 2007), an MA in Gallery Studies (University of Essex, UK, 1992) and a BA in Archaeology-History of Art (National and Kapodistrian University, Greece, 1989). Since 1992, Delia has been holding scientific and administrative posts in museums and cultural bodies (Yannis Tsarouhis Foundation, the Cycladic and Ancient Art Museum, The Foundation of the Hellenic World, the Hellenic Ministry of Culture, the Norwegian Institute at Athens), while lecturing in museology and curation studies in the Greek academia and higher educational institutions (The Athens College/Lifelong Learning Programmes, Panteion University, National and Kapodistrian University, The Athens School of Fine Arts). From 1998 to 2004, Delia was a research collaborator at Roskilde University (Department of Communication) in Denmark. She has curated several exhibitions and published in English and Greek. Her main research interests focus on the evolution of the museum phenomenon, the epistemology of digital heritage and novel curation practices including the reuse of deadstock fabrics within sustainable heritage and circular economy. Delia is the main editor of the collective volume The Theory of Museology. Main Schools of Thought 1960-2000 (ISBN 2021) published in the series Papers and Monographs from the Norwegian Institute at Athens.

Download this seminar’s program here.