Barret Weber is Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Alberta. Before beginning work on my Ph.D., I wrote a M.A. thesis called Revolutions in Law and Sovereignty: Carl Schmitt and the Theory of the Modern State (2007) at the University of Alberta. This was the birth of my formal interests in classical and contemporary political theory in North America and Europe.
My subsequent Ph.D. work has expanded on this foundational theoretical work to consider the role of the circumpolar Arctic in contemporary world affairs. My dissertation to date - tentatively called the Politics of Development in Nunavut - focuses on the post-war political ideas of the Inuit in relation to the Canadian state in the eastern Arctic, including the dramatic rise of Nunavut as a sub-national territory of Canada during this period. These writings investigate the role of Inuit politics in three discourses in particular: the politics of climate change, International Law and continental shelf disputes, and the ongoing role of bureaucracy and Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit (IQ), or traditional knowledge, in Nunavut.
