Bjørk Tørnkvist: Value creation, contestation, and power relations surrounding mining operations in South Greenland

I am a Norwegian PhD student at Roskilde university in Denmark, working on my project titled "Value creation, contestation, and power relations surrounding mining operations in South Greenland". My PhD is jointly supervised by Lars Buur at Roskilde and Javier Arnaut at Ilisimatusarfik. 

In my research I investigate how value creation, contestation, and power relations are embedded in the environmental governance of rare earth element (REE) mining. I hope to uncover the complex ways in which different conceptualizations of value are drawn upon by various actors and stakeholders to advance specific ideas of green extractivisim which in turn serve particular (geo)political agendas. I explore these questions by researching the Kuannersuit and Killavaat Alannguat mining sites in South Greenland as case studies.