Doctoral Defense in Tourism Studies - Þórný Barðadóttir

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Doctoral candidate: Þórný Barðadóttir

Title of thesis: Mobilities in Melrakkaslétta. Ethnographic inquiry into placemaking, tourism and other mobilities on the margin

Opponents:
Dr. Jørgen Ole Bærenholdt, Professor at the Department of People and Technology, Roskilde University, Denmark
Dr. Anniken Førde, Professor at the Department of Social Sciences, UiT - The Arctic University of Norway.

Advisors:
Dr. Gunnar Þór Jóhannesson, Professor at the Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland
Dr. Katrín Anna Lund, Professor at the Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland

Other members of the doctoral committee:
Dr. Jo Vergunst, Senior Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of Aberdeen, Scotland

Chair of Ceremony: Dr. Snæbjörn Pálsson, Professor and Head of the Faculty of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Iceland

Abstract

This doctoral research explores the entanglements of placemaking, mobilities and the making of margins in the context of tourism.

The research examines how places come to be and are transformed in relation to various mobilities within as well as through connections. This means investigating how mobilities can be both creators and undoers of margins, caused by distances, lacking connections, or both.

The research makes use of flat ontology and relational materialism which rejects traditional dualism to instead assume that reality is created through interconnected, ever-evolving entanglements of material human and more-than-human relations.

The research is qualitative, based on ethnographic investigation, and its main methods are participatory observation, interviews and conversations in the field of research, Melrakkaslétta peninsula. Melrakkaslétta is the northernmost area of the Icelandic mainland, situated far north of the main routes of domestic travel. The peninsula is furthermore about as far from the country’s main entering hub as is geographically possible within the country. The research investigates what makes the place Melrakkaslétta, how it has evolved and transformed in relation to more-than-human mobilities.

The novelty of the research is its approach of conducting tourism research in a non-touristy rural area and it demonstrates the agency of mobilities in the creation of centres and margins, not least in the context of the potential of rural tourism development.

About the doctoral candidate

Þórný Barðadóttir is born in 1970 and spent her childhood in the village Kópasker in the in the rural northeast Iceland. As so many youngster of rural areas, Þórný spent some years living in the Icelandic capital for work and study.

She earned her Journeyman's certificate in Meet Production in 1994 whereafter she moved to Denmark to study Food Technology at the Technical Collage in Holsterbro. Having earned her degree in 1997 she returned to Iceland and soon after to the Icelandic North, this time around to Eyjafjörður where both her now grown-up children are born and raised.

In 2013 Þórný graduated with a BA degree in Media studies and in 2016 with a MA degree in Research Intensive Social Sciences from the University of Akureyri.

Since then, she has worked as a researcher at the Icelandic Tourism Research Centre, since 2020 along with her PhD study in Tourism Studies at the University of Iceland. Since 2024 Þórný is furthermore holding a parttime position as a researcher at the Stefanson Arctic Institute.