Work package leader: Elana Rowe (NUPI)

GoNorth is a natural science project, but the work planned speaks in several ways to the strengths of researchers of geopolitics. NUPI has a longstanding interest in how scientific efforts to map and understand Norwegian territories figure into the assertion of state sovereignty and into Norwegian foreign policy traditions and practices more broadly. NUPI researchers have worked on this topic of how scientific knowledge translates into political power for Norway from both historical and contemporary perspectives.

Several NUPI researchers have done studies on how Norwegian science and political efforts in the Arctic are perceived and interpreted, particularly by Russia. Analysis of the geopolitical context for and spin-offs from the GoNorth project would add a significant dimension to the project’s outcomes.

Main objective of WP7 is to understand how the science-policy interface works in global governance and in Norway specifically. The GoNorth project may offer opportunity to do some reflexive research on how the ongoing outputs of the project are received by policymakers.