Based in Norwegian Sápmi, Dr. Ellen Marie Jensen is an independent scholar, educator, author, and affiliate of the APRI research group on social and cultural systems and member of the Co-Create initiative. She earned her PhD in Humanities and Social Sciences from UiT, Arctic University of Norway in 2019 with a trans-disciplinary project in Indigenous and gender studies. For a decade, Jensen has been an educator in various fields, disciplines, and institutions. Her most recent position was as Associate Professor at the Sámi University of Applied Sciences where she taught and mentored in the Sámi Pathfinder program.
To date, much of Jensen’s scholarship has focused on the following broad themes: Sámi migration; gendered and decolonial perspectives in Sámi research; Indigenous research methods and methodologies; storytelling and narrative; violence in the context of extractive industries; and Indigenous cultural resurgence.
As a Sámi immersed in the historical and contemporary issues associated with extractive industries in Sápmi, Jensen has turned her research interests toward the social, linguistic, and cultural impacts of mining and the so-called “Green transition” in Sápmi. She is passionate about Indigenous cultural, social and political sovereignty and agency in local communities, self-determination, storytelling and relationality as vehicles for transformation, trans-disciplinary scholarship, Indigenous and decolonial research methodologies, global networking and solidarity, and Indigenous cultural resurgence despite ongoing colonial duress.
