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Dr Rosanna White

(Former)

Department of Geography

Supervised by

Klaus Dodds First/primary/lead supervisor
1/10/13 → …
Philip Hatfield
1/10/13 → …

Educational background

2013- MSc Geopolitics and Security, Royal Holloway, University of London

2012- BSc (First Class) with Honours Geography, Politics and International Relations

Personal profile

My thesis contributes to research within Polar geography concerning assemblages of critical geopolitics, sovereignty acts and explorations of the Polar Regions to create 'occupying atmospheres'. My PhD research, was a collaborative partnership between The British Library and the department. I was supervised by Professor Klaus Dodds and within the Eccles Centre, British Library by Dr Phil Hatfield.

My PhD thesis is entitled. Ceremonies of Possession: Performing Sovereignty in the Canadian Arctic.

Research interests

My PhD researches how historically ,material bodies (both human and non-human) get embodied and enrolled in territorial practices by different actors, and at different registers within the Canadian Arctic which I call 'ceremonies of possession'. I question what happens when these objects have their own agency and how does their very materiality and volume affect how and where these practices take place. I also consider how the geophysical materiality of the environment further complicates these sovereign ceremonies and sometimes resists these practices altogether. I understand that these ceremonies of possession by the State not only construct Arctic space as Canadian, but these practices also socially construct the Canadian State.

By consulting a wealth of primary archival documents held at the British Library on early Arctic exploration and the settlement of the 'New World' as well as archival research carried out throughout Canada, including their National Archives, my PhD research shows that these ceremonies of possession are rooted in historical colonial practices and moreover are still used by the Canadian State to territorialise the Canadian Arctic and North West Passage today.