On Wednesday, April 2, ASF and Scandinavia House present a virtual panel discussion with panelists Ulrik Pram Gad (Senior Researcher on Arctic identity, diplomacy and security, the Danish Institute of International Studies) and journalist and historian Gordon F. Sander on the past, present and future of Greenland. With moderator Thorsten Wagner (Danish-German historian and Executive Director of FASPE), the panelists will discuss topics including Greenlandic history, current debates in relation to Denmark and global actors, the recent parliamentary elections, and their political implications.
Please note that this panel was initially scheduled for 12:30 PM EDT; it will now be taking place at 12 PM EDT.
This panel will take place via Zoom; advance registration recommended.
ABOUT THE PANELISTS
Ulrik Pram Gad is a senior researcher on Arctic identity, diplomacy and security for the Danish Institute of International Studies. His core research interest concerns how identities are constituted and negotiated by and in opposition to the nation state, particularly in how these processes shape and are shaped by diplomacy and security politics. His work focuses on the Greenlandic-Danish relation as part of regional Arctic or global security configurations, or places the relation in a comparative perspective. Conceptually oriented projects have focused on securitization, sovereignty, paradiplomacy, postcoloniality and sustainability. Recent projects include a volume on Greenland in Arctic security: Entangled (de)securitization dynamics under climatic thaw and geopolitical freeze, developing securitization theory by way of detailed case studies of related Arctic dynamics (2024, University of Michigan Press, co-edited with Marc Jacobsen and Ole Wæver). In 2020-2024, he directed the collaborative research project “Imagining Independence in the Arctic: Greenland’s Postcolonial Politics of Comparison [Imagine PoCo]”, financed by a Sapere Aude grant from the Independent Research Fund Denmark. The project analyzes with whom and how Greenland compares itself when seeking inspiration for how to develop towards independence. Researchers from DIIS, Aalborg University and Greenland contributes to the project. A series of small policy projects and affiliation with Nasiffik – Center for Foreign and Security Policy at Ilisimatusarfik/University of Greenland have aimed to enhance the common Greenlandic/Danish knowledge base on foreign, security and defense politics under ‘hybrid sovereignty.’ Specifically, the perspectives after the new Greenlandic draft constitution were discussed in two seminars on Free Association. Since 2014, he has organized the Arctic Politics seminars which serves as a core research infrastructure research environments across the humanities and the social sciences working on Greenlandic and Arctic projects.
Gordon F. Sander is a native New Yorker who graduated from Cornell University with a B.A. in history in 1973. His career as a foreign correspondent began in 1976 with a profile of the Netherlands in The New York Times Magazine, after which he became a regular contributor to both the paper’s Styles and Education sections. His byline has since appeared in over 60 leading American, British and European newspapers, magazines and news sites, including Financial Times, The New York Review of Books, Rolling Stone, The Chronicle of Higher Education, Wilson Quarterly, Daily Telegraph, Politico and The Christian Science Monitor. He additionally writes for the Washington Post, where he recently wrote an essay on the history of United States-Greenland relations. He is the author of seven books, including Serling: The Rise and Twilight of Television’s Last Angry Man (1992); The Frank Family That Survived ( 2004); The Hundred Day Winter War, history of the 1939-40 Soviet-Finnish Winter War (2010); Off the Map: A Personal History of Finland (2012); Comeback Coach (2017), and Rooms: The Works and Life of JJ Manford. His newest book, Finnish Front Line: Kekkonen, Kennedy, Khrushchev and the Cold War, will be published this fall by Cornell University Press. He was artist in residence at his alma mater, Cornell University from 2002 to 2004. Sander is also an active photographer and photojournalist. In 2017 President Sauli Niinisto of Finland awarded him The Order of the Lion for his contributions to literature and the arts. He is currently based in Riga, Latvia.
Thorsten Wagner is the Executive Director of FASPE and has been involved with the organization since its beginnings in 2009. He is a German historian who grew up in Denmark and completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Tübingen, Germany, and his graduate work at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the Technische Universität Berlin, and the Freie Universität Berlin, earning his MA from the TU Berlin in 1998. Living in Berlin for about two decades, Thorsten worked as a research fellow at the Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies and started teaching at the Humboldt University in Berlin. From 2010-2019, he held a permanent position as Associate Professor at the Danish Institute for Study Abroad/University of Copenhagen. Having authored numerous academic publications in the fields of Modern German and European Jewish History, antisemitism, Holocaust studies, cultures of memory, and Israeli history and society, he also worked as the historical consultant for the acclaimed documentary Germans and Jews dealing with contemporary Germany, its relationship to its Nazi past and the reemergence of Jewish life. He, his wife Johanna and their two children live in New York City.
Images (L-R)—Gordon F. Sander, Ulrik Pram Gad (photo by Lynggaardhansenfoto.dk), Thorsten Wagner. Background: Nuuk Skyline at Night—Photo by Quintin Soloviev