Ingrid Medby

I am a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Newcastle University, UK. However, I am originally from North Norway, having grown up across the three northernmost counties, Nordland, Troms, and Finnmark – something which no doubt has influenced my interest in Arctic research. Following my undergraduate studies (BA International Relations) at RMIT University in Australia and postgraduate at the University of Edinburgh (MSc International Relations), I worked as a trainee for the North Norway European Office in Brussels, Belgium in 2012-13. It was the latter experience, in combination with my studies and personal background, which led me to question how ideas of “Arctic identity” influence policy-makers – a topic I was fortunate to get to study in my PhD at Durham University (completed in 2017).

My research interests centre on the intersection of, on the one hand, Arctic geopolitics, statecraft, and sovereignty; and on the other, identities, homelands, and narratives. In my PhD project I looked specifically at how state personnel from the three Arctic states Canada, Iceland, and Norway articulate their own sense of Arctic identity and how this may influence political behaviour.

I am still intrigued by these questions and continue exploring how identity narratives’ emotional and rhetorical power influence practices of Arctic geopolitics. Since my PhD, I have also been involved in research on the interrelated topics of Indigenous inclusion, of Russian-Norwegian people-to-people relations, so-called language-games of political performance, and mental wellbeing in a time of climate change.

If you want to learn more about my work, please do get in touch. I can be reached via email (Ingrid.medby@newcastle.ac.uk), on BlueSky (@ingridagnete.bsky.social),  and X (@IngridAgnete), or you can find my staff profile at Newcastle University here: https://www.ncl.ac.uk/gps/staff/profile/ingridmedby.html

Some of my work:

Medby, I.A. (2025) Arctic state identity: Geography, history, and geopolitical relations. Manchester: Manchester University Press. https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526153906/

Chuffart, R., Vold Hansen, T. and Medby, I.A. (2024) ‘Rethinking the exercise of sovereignty in the Anthropocene: From extraction to environmental protection in Arctic Svalbard’, Political Geography, 114. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2024.103185.

Medby, I.A. (2023) ‘An articulation of geopolitics otherwise? Indigenous language-use in spaces of Arctic geopolitics’, Area, 55(1), pp. 18–25. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12758.

Medby, I.A. and Dittmer, J. (2021) ‘From Death in the Ice to life in the museum: Absence, affect and mystery in the Arctic’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 39(1), pp. 176–193. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775820953859.

Medby, I.A. (2020) ‘Political geography and language: A reappraisal for a diverse discipline’, Area, 52(1), pp. 148–155. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/area.12559.

Medby, I.A. (2019) ‘State Discourses of Indigenous “Inclusion”: Identity and Representation in the Arctic’, Antipode, 4(51), pp. 1276–1295. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12542.

Medby, I.A. (2019) ‘Language-games, geography, and making sense of the Arctic’, Geoforum, 107, pp. 124–133. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2019.10.003.

Medby, I.A. (2018). Articulating State identity: ‘Peopling’ the Arctic State. Political Geography 62: 116-125. Available from: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.polgeo.2017.10.008