Presentation

The Canada Research Chair With Living Environments of the North was created in 2024 in the Geography Department of UQAM’s Faculty of Social Sciences, as part of the Canada Research Chairs Program. The work carried out by the Chair analyzes the geographical processes of northern living in a context of profound territorial change. It examines the practices, representations, knowledge and memories rooted in ancestral territories, indigenous and non-indigenous communities, natural and cultural environments transformed by the extractive industry, and temporary settlements (workers’ camps) or so-called disappeared settlements (closed villages, mining towns) in Northern Quebec. Its research program has 3 main axes:   

1) Inhabited North, whose aim is to analyze the geographical knowledge and practices of everyday northern living;   

2) Migrations and mobilities, which studies territorialities linked to mobility, as well as the factors of attraction, retention and repulsion of northern living environments;   

3) Intercultural Cohabitation, which examines the way of living-together in the North. 

Anchored in the North, the activities carried out by the Chair advocate an approach involving a close relationship between research, teaching and the practical environment of public, parapublic and community action. They call for collaborative and participatory approaches in which the populations concerned are actors, guiding the work, the themes, the research orientations, the empirical work, as well as the ways in which knowledge is shared and mobilized. Alternative, creative and artistic research and mobilization activities are encouraged at the Chair.