May-Britt Öhman is an Associate professor in Environmental History at Uppsala University and Lule and Forest Sámi with Tornedalian heritage. She is a senior researcher at the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism, CEMFOR, and leads several projects funded by Swedish research councils. She is also a co-lead for Pathway T5 – Decolonising Science and Education of ⴰⵔⵔⴰⵎⴰⵜ Ărramăt Project based out of the University of Alberta. Her research areas include feminists technoscience, water resources, hydroelectric power and exploitation, racism, settler colonialism, and decolonization.
While Öhman’s doctoral studies focused on hydropower in Tanzania, a research project in her home region on the Lule River led her back to her heritage and she now focuses primarily on Sábme (the land of the Sámi), the history of the Sami people and exchange with non-Sámi society. She reflects on the start of this journey in her 2010 article, “Being May-Britt Öhman: Or, Reflections on my own Colonized Mind Regarding Hydropower Constructions in Sápmi.” Since then, Öhman has published extensively on Sámi history and culture, from the innovative Sámi technology of the ski, to Sámi relationships with waterways and dams, to the experiences of reindeer herders during the COVID-19 pandemic.
At the Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism, Öhman leads a project called “Environmental Justice, Land Based Learning and Social Sustainability in Sábme” which draws on Indigenous knowledge, perspective, and expertise to challenge destructive Western relationships with the environment. She is an active member of Sámi society and has served in the board of the National Saami Association and acted as a deputy member of the Sámi Parliament. She is currently an Expert within the Swedish Government Committee on Reindeer Lands,
Contact:
Websites: https://www.uu.se/en/contact-and-organisation/staff?query=N8-902; https://www.maybrittohman.com/
Email: may-britt.ohman@cemfor.uu.se
Select Works:
“Documenting an Ongoing Pandemic: A Sámi Reindeer Herders’ Diary during the COVID-19 Pandemic.” In Minorities in Global History: Cultures of Integration and Patterns of Exclusion, edited by Holger Weiss. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2024.
Ungreen windpower: Sámi Indigenous and scientific perspectives on fossil dependent designs. Short film. Dálkke: Indigenous Climate Change Studies research project, CEMFOR, Uppsala University. https://media.medfarm.uu.se/play/video/14968
“The ski or the wheel? Foregrounding Sámi technological Innovation in the Arctic region and challenging its invisibility in the history of humanity.” In Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies, edited by Brendan Hokowhitu, Aileen Moreton-Robinson, Linda Tuhiwai-Smith, Chris Andersen, and Steve Larkin, 431-446. London: Routledge, 2020.
“Places and Peoples: Sámi feminist technoscience and supradisciplinary research methods.” in Sources and Methods in Indigenous Studies, edited by Chris Andersen and Jean M. O’Brien, 152-159. London: Routledge, 2016.
“Technovisions of a Sámi cyborg: Re-claiming Sámi body-, land- and waterscapes after a century of colonial exploitations.” in Illdisciplined Gender: Engaging Questions of Nature/Culture and Transgressive Encounters, edited by Jacob Bull and Margaretha Fahlgren, 63-98. Rotterdam: Springer, 2016.
“Embodied Vulnerability in Large-Scale Technical Systems: Vulnerable Dam Bodies, Water Bodies, and Human Bodies.” In Bodies, Boundaries and Vulnerabilities: Interrogating Social, Cultural and Political Aspects of Embodiment, edited by Lisa Folkmarson Käll, 47-79. Cham: Springer, 2016.
“Being May-Britt Öhman: Or, Reflections on my own Colonized Mind Regarding Hydropower Constructions in Sápmi.” In Travelling Thoughtfulness – Feminist Technoscience Stories, edited by Pirjo Elovaara, Johanna Sefyrin, May-Bitt Öhman, and Christina Björkman, 260-283. Umeå: Institutionen för Informatik, Umeå Universitet, 2010.