Gifts from the Sentient Forest
A collaborative, international, and interdisciplinary research project between the University of Lapland Arctic Centre, Finland, and Southern Cross University, Australia with support from the Kone Foundation, Finland, 'In the Woods' Funding Programme (2024 --2026)
Project Coordinator
Dr Francis Joy
Francis Joy is from west Yorkshire in the United Kingdom, and has been living in Finland since 2004. Since that time, he has studied and worked as a scholar of the study of Sámi religion at both the University of Helsinki, Finland, where he earned his Master’s degree in the Philosophy of Religion in relation to the study of Sámi shamanism and prehistoric rock art in Finland, in 2007. In March 2018, Francis graduated from the University of Lapland Faculty of Art and Design in Rovaniemi, Finland, as a Doctor of the study of religion and art. The studies in Rovaniemi began in 2010 and have been predominantly concerned with the study of Sámi religion, cosmology and art from prehistory, to the seventeenth century and then on into contemporary culture. For more information, see https://research.ulapland.fi/en/persons/francis-joy
Project Coordinator
Dr John C. Ryan
John Charles Ryan is an international scholar in the fields of literary studies, creative writing, and environmental humanities. He holds positions as Adjunct Associate Professor at Southern Cross University, Australia, and Adjunct Faculty in Earth and Environmental Sciences at Susquehanna University in the U.S. His research focuses on Aboriginal Australian literature, Southeast Asian ecocriticism, ecopoetics, and transdisciplinary plant studies. Ryan’s book publications include Introduction to the Environmental Humanities (2022, Routledge, co-authored). He is Editor of the journal Plant Perspectives and Managing Co-Editor of The Trumpeter. In 2023–24, he undertook visiting fellowships in China, India, Indonesia, Finland, and Thailand. For more information, see www.johncharlesryan.com
International Project Assistant
Assistant Professor Goutam Majhi
Goutam Majhi is an assistant professor in the Department of English, Sadhan Chandra Mahavidyalaya, and a doctoral scholar in the Department of English, Bankura University, West Bengal, India. He has translated a Bangla novel, namely Manthra by Abhijit Choudhury, into English. In 2017, he received a National Teaching Excellence Award conferred by the International Benevolent Research Foundation. He has presented papers at many international conferences, and his research articles have been published in reputed international and national journals. Recently he has convened two international conferences, Postcolonial Ecospheres: Principles, Policies & Politics in 2022 and Global Plant Humanities: Multidisciplinary Perspectives on Botanical Life in 2023 in collaboration with Southern Cross University, Australia. In 2024, his co-edited collection, Beyond the Heteronorm: Interrogating Critical Alterities in Global Art & Literature, was published by Lexington Books, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield. He is currently researching radical environmentalism.