Vanier Scholar Profile

Name: Noorjehan Johnson

School, department: McGill University, Department of Anthropology

Title of Research Project: Inuit participation in climate change activism and policy: connecting local and global knowledge through institutional networks and practices

Researcher’s Vision:

“I hope that my research will support the efforts of Inuit and other indigenous peoples to democratize and decolonize science and governance, and that it will help to highlight the different skills and knowledge required for effective policy-making on environmental change.”

Description of Research:

Noorjehan Johnson is investigating how local Inuit knowledge and activism about environmental change is communicated on a global scale and how it is affected by scientific and policy objectives on climate change. Her work traces how local knowledge is contested, negotiated and changed as it moves through national and international institutional frameworks.

Her research brings her to the Inuit community of Clyde River on northern Baffin Island, to Iqaluit in Nunavut, where territorial policy is formed, and finally to the Inuit Circumpolar Council in Ottawa where local knowledge is debated alongside broader policy objectives.

Johnson’s work brings together science, policy-making and activism and it will contribute to economic, social and environmental policy in the rapidly changing Arctic.

After completing her master’s degree in the United States, Johnson moved to Montreal to pursue doctoral studies in anthropology at McGill University.