October 1, 2025 @ 16h00 – 17h30 CEST
In this first session, we welcomed Kristen Intemann (Montana State University) as our guest. We have discussed her current project that focuses on how research ethics policies often fail to promote equitable research in Greenland, where climate studies, while globally beneficial, may unintentionally harm local communities.
The seminar talk “Promoting Equitable Research: What we can learn from Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland)” by Kristen Intemann, raised urgent questions about the ethics and impacts of climate research on the local population in Greenland. While Kalaallit Nunaat’s vast ice sheet and geopolitical position attract scientific attention, the paper highlighted a persistent disconnect between research agendas and the lived realities of local communities.
The main thesis is that researchers are only bound by the policies of their research institutions (from e.g. the US and Europe) and that current research ethics policies are often insufficient because they focus narrowly on scientific integrity while neglecting research equity and failing to account for the social, political and environmental context of Kalaallit Nunaat. There is, in other words, a significant gap between priorities of research agendas and local needs. There are several factors contributing to this problem. First, the dominant attitude in natural science research is that they have no impact on local communities because they are not directly interacting with them, often flying in on government or military planes immediately to the ice sheets. Second, there is a scarcity of local, Kalaallit researchers and local resources to conduct research. Third, communities experience an oversaturation of social research leading to a research fatigue, combined with the practical challenges of travel and short timelines for building relationships. These challenges are compounded by Kalaallit Nunaat’s colonial history and current vulnerability.
A core challenge is the perceived imbalance of benefits and burdens of research. The dominant attitude in academia is that knowledge production is in itself beneficial (which stands in relation to the attention that goes to publications and grants). They believe, furthermore, that research is vital to understand climate change which will serve Greenlanders too. However, Greenlanders express they are receiving the costs of research and not the benefits. Just producing knowledge to understand global dynamics of climate change does not lead to understanding how it’s going to impact the local communities. By contrast, research needs to be anchored in Greenland itself, led by the communities’ values, interests and culture, and benefit therefore Greenlanders themselves. The equity piece and benefit piece are connected.
In the seminar, ongoing work was highlighted to bridge this gap. Indigenous groups, such as the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC), have proposed research guidelines that should be enforced by governments. In addition, the research project where Intemann is part of organised interactive listening sessions to understand local perspectives on the challenges and potential benefits of research. Equitable research requires the co-creation of knowledge. Intemann emphasised the importance of “epistemic humility,” acknowledging that the visiting researcher is an outsider and potentially part of the problem.
While the paper (Intemann et al. manuscript) targets the scientific community, we reflected in the seminar upon the implications for philosophy of science. It was noted that philosophy of science often retains a bias toward justification, objectivity and values in science, while research ethics remains still understudied. There is work to be done to bring equity issues in philosophy of science; and this is also where feminist philosophy of science comes in. Feminist philosophy comes in in centring questions of care and responsibility (see e.g. Whyte and Cuomo, 2016) in thinking about knowledge co-production, reflecting on how to build equitable partnership (e.g. through listening sessions), and reflecting on how not to perpetrate imperialism in doing research.
Organisers: Sapna Kumar and Futura Venuto