Senior scientist: associate professor Jean-Michel Huctin

Jean-Michel Huctin is an anthropologist and Associate Professor at Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, where he is a member of CEARC. He has worked in Kalaallit Nunaat for nearly three decades, developing a particularly close and sustained relationship with the community of Uummannaq in north-west Greenland. His research has focused on Inuit societies, cultural change, youth and education, and on the ways in which Greenlandic communities navigate profound environmental and social transformations.

Within PREFER, Jean-Michel brings this long-term ethnographic engagement with Kalaallit Nunaat, with Uummannaq as his priority field site. His contribution is grounded in an intimate knowledge of the community and in long-standing relationships with local institutions, families, hunters, young people and other community members. He is particularly attentive to how people themselves understand change, continuity and the future, and to the importance of taking local knowledge and experience seriously when addressing situations of profound uncertainty.

His anthropological work has addressed sensitive questions surrounding Inuit children, family life, education and social work, while his more recent research has explored environmental and cultural change, adaptation and the future of Arctic communities. He has played a central role in several collaborative projects bringing together anthropology, environmental sciences, visual arts and local knowledge, including research co-produced with Inuit youth and their teachers.

Jean-Michel is also a co-founder of the Uummannaq Polar Institute and has maintained close links with the Uummannaq Children’s Home. His commitment to long-term collaboration and knowledge co-production is central to his research practice. Through PREFER, he brings this experience to the study of terminal situations, contributing an ethnographic perspective grounded not in an abstract representation of Inuit life, but in sustained relationships with a community facing a rapidly changing world.