ERC Grant Sean Desjardins

Sean Desjardins received an Starting Grant from the European Research Council's (ERC) consisting of €1.5 million for a period of five years. The grant is meant for outstanding researchers with the aim of stimulating cutting-edge research in Europe. Sean's project is called TRACES (Tracking Long-term Resilience in Arctic Sociocultural-Ecological Systems), an interdisciplinary project aiming to better understand the differences between Western-scientific understandings of sustainability/conservation, and time-honored Inuit traditional knowledge about environmental health and human/nonhuman animal relationships.

This will be accomplished through research on:

1. Modern Inuit subsistence hunting (of, for example, seals, walruses and caribou)
2. The archaeology of past harvesting (from ca. AD 1300 to present)
3. Inuit traditional knowledge about hunting and broader relationships with animals
4. Circumpolar governmental policy on the regulation of a wide-range of animal-related activities, such as hunting, sewing and carving.

Based at the Arctic Centre, Groningen Institute of Archaeology, the TRACES team will carry out the research alongside Inuit knowledge- and rights-holders in the biogeographically-dynamic Foxe Basin region of Nunavut, Inuit Nunangat (the traditional lands, waters and ices of what is now Canada).

Click here to learn more about Sean's research.