Dr. Heather Nicol, a member of Trent’s Geography Department, is a political geographer who studies the political, historic, and economic realities surrounding the Canada-U.S. border. Following on the heels of the launch of her most recent book, The Fence and the Bridge: Geopolitics and Identity along the Canada–US Border, she’s now taking her research south of the border as the Canada Fulbright Visiting Chair in Arctic Studies at the University of Washington.

Studying the Arctic from an American perspective

The position at the University of Washington Prof. Nicol explains, involves researching and understanding United States approaches to the Arctic, looking at the geopolitical issues concerning the Arctic, and initiating conversations with academics, undergraduates, and graduate students. Prof. Nicol will not only be able to conduct extensive research, but will be looking into establishing initiatives to connect people on geopolitical issues and hopefully work with the World Policy Institute in New York and Borders in Gobilization Project at University of Victoria.

“For me, this is really invaluable access to American scholarship,” says Prof. Nicol. “As a Canadian Geography professor with several grad students, I think this is a great way of building connections and opportunities for them.  All of this is linked to the study of political geography in Canada. With this opportunity, I really wish to look more generally at the Arctic context, particularly from an American perspective.”

Contesting Canada and contesting borders

Borders are often used to enforce a sense of a singular national identity. However, national borders often don’t reflect the true nature of demographic, economic, and cultural ties. Canada provides many examples of this, as Prof. Nicol notes: “Today, border scholars see the idea of the nation state as quite problematic—there are more connections across international boundary lines than within boundaries, and Canadian provinces may be less connected with each other in terms of flows of goods, information and money than are some provinces with US states.”

Prof. Nicol explores this idea of borders being central to Canadian identity in her recently released book The Fence and the Bridge: Geopolitics and Identity along the Canada–US Border. In the book, she discusses how current identity politics and security policy regarding Canada’s borders has been influenced as much by American interests than anything else within Canada itself.

Nation-building and the North

However, her investigation of what nation-states really are looks not only across borders, but within them. In particular, she also researches how Canada has defended strict control over Arctic territory under the guise of national identity and nation-building and and the growing consensus that Indigenous groups are within their rights to redefine what sovereignty means for them within Canada

“We live in what has been called a “post-Westphalian state,” where power is diffuse and people connect globally, which means that we should question who has the agency to speak for the state. This is what some of my work focuses on – the idea that state sovereignty can be contested because it is increasingly indefensible,” she explains. “In arguing this, I support the idea that Indigenous groups have the legitimacy to define and determine who speaks for them and the right to contest state sovereignty where necessary.