March 17 2025

People of ICEBERG—Anne S. Chahine & Nina Döring

Throughout the ICEBERG project, we will introduce the people working on the project. In this personnel introduction, Anne S. Chahine and Nina Döring from Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences (GFZ) introduce themselves and share what inspires them about ICEBERG.

Anne S. Chahine during firldwork in Quqartoc in Kalaallit Nunaat. Photo: Tahnee Prior.

Anne S. Chahine

“I am part of the RIFS/GFZ team in ICEBERG, and RIFS stands for Research Institute for Sustainability at Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences (GFZ), located in Potsdam, Germany. I have a visual and media anthropology background and have been part of the research group reIMAGINE Arctic Research at the RIFS/GFZ for almost three years.

I am interested in contemporary colonial dependencies, structures, and domination within research, and how to create spaces for meaningful engagement, to talk about these things within the European research community. As a practice-based researcher, I utilize arts-based methods and multimodality as methodological frameworks ‘to think with’.

Within ICEBERG, I am leading Task 4.2 “Ethics and Evaluation”, which is part of Work Package 4 “Co-Creation, Ethics, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”. We are interested in developing spaces that make evaluation and explicit engagement with research ethics possible, throughout the ICEBERG project. The aim is to support the development and application of co-creative and collaborative methods across all WPs and feed back the generated insights back to the project’s partners.

I am particularly interested in examining how we apply and evaluate ethics and engagement protocols in Arctic research, specifically within large EU-funded projects such as ICEBERG.

“I believe in fostering an ongoing discussion and reflection among all participants involved in the project, including scientists from various disciplines, as well as Indigenous and local community members.”

I aim to shift away from research ethics that rely solely on researchers’ self-assessment at the beginning of a project. I believe in fostering an ongoing discussion and reflection among all participants involved in the project, including scientists from various disciplines, as well as Indigenous and local community members.

Anne S. Chahine installing blackout curtains during fieldwork in Qaqortoq, Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), September 2024, Photo: Erik Kielsen.

It is crucial to consider each individual’s background, history, and responsibilities. This consideration is especially important for Arctic research conducted by European groups that are largely composed of organizations outside the regions they study. I find this issue particularly relevant in the context of Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland), which has deep colonial ties to Denmark and limited ethical guidelines for research.

I hope to learn more about how to bring together people with different backgrounds, knowledge systems, disciplines, and interests to have an on-going conversation about ethics and the evaluation of our research practices.

This also ties into finding ways to make this work within such high-paced and pre-determined structures that we find in academia and EU-funded projects, especially when it comes to building meaningful, respectful, and long-lasting relations with the people and environment we work with/in.

I also find the concepts of research ethics and research integrity at times hard to grasp and put into action, and I hope to contribute to making these terminologies more applicable in the future, especially in interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary working environments.”

Nina Döring and Marie Lucia Gerda Döring 2025, Photo: Nina Döring.

Nina Döring

“I am part of the RIFS team in ICEBERG (RIFS stands for Research Institute for Sustainability in Potsdam, Germany). My background is in International Development and Human Geography and I have been leading a research group at RIFS for the past five years exploring spaces of engagement, methodological frameworks, and evaluation processes that facilitate more ethical and equitable research relations across knowledge systems with a focus on the Arctic.

This is also where my interest lies within the ICEBERG project: RIFS researchers contribute to Work Package 4 “Co-Creation, Ethics, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion”, aiming especially to engage with questions around ethics and evaluation within the context of a large EU Horizon project.

I am currently on maternity leave, learning about a very different way of communicating with another (tiny) human being, and look forward to re-joining ICEBERG in July.

With an entire work package dedicated to co-creation, ethics, diversity, equity, and inclusion, ICEBERG provides an interesting opportunity to explore these topics in further depth within the context of a large EU-funded project. ICEBERG brings together researchers from a wide range of academic disciplines and aims to adopt a collaborative approach with communities in Iceland, Svalbard, and Kalaallit Nunaat.

People involved in ICEBERG will have diverse understandings of how research should be carried out and will have to address diverse ethical challenges throughout the duration of the project and beyond, in particular when working across disciplines and knowledge systems.

By placing a focus on research ethics and approaches to ethics evaluation, ICEBERG can contribute to urgent discussions needed to address the continued effects of coloniality in the European Arctic research landscape.

“I hope to learn more about how concepts and approaches to research ethics vary across disciplines and knowledge systems to better understand how we may move away from colonial and exploitative research practices.”

I hope to learn more about how concepts and approaches to research ethics vary across disciplines and knowledge systems to better understand how we may move away from colonial and exploitative research practices.

As a German researcher, I am especially interested in learning more about concrete steps required to be taken in this direction at German and European research institutions.

With WP4s focus on evaluation, I am particularly curious about approaches to ethics evaluation within a large consortium project. The context of ICEBERG will also provide ample learning opportunities to better understand institutional and structural constraints to ethical and equitable research practices within the dominant academic system. I hope that we will learn not only from what works but also from our failures as the project progresses.”