Odin's Eye Blog

The Islands Matter webinars are the result of a collaboration between Dr Andrew Jennings Institute for Northern Studies UHI, Professor Frank Rennie Lews Castle College UHI and Dr Beth Mouat Shetland UHI. This series of webinars was set up to address the hunger in the Scottish islands to hear from experts based in other islands worldwide, and to help inform the UHI Islands’ Strategy.

Of the world’s 120 Sub-National Island Jurisdictions listed, about 50 are former colonies whose communities retain constitutional bonds with their former colonial metropoles: London, Paris, Washington, Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Canberra, Wellington. The communities of these 50 non-sovereign island territories struggle to decolonise the relationships with their metropoles. However, since 1983, none have moved to become independent, sovereign, states. In fact, in the course of time, most became quite successful in continuously rebalancing the relationships with their former colonial metropoles to their advantage; creating what has been labelled an “Islandian sovereignty”. In this webinar for the Islands Matter Series, Gerard will, first, detail six strategies applied by these non-sovereign island territories to expand their autonomy. Second, Gerard will invite webinar participants to explore to what extent these six strategies are relevant for other Sub-National Island Jurisdictions.

Gerard Prinsen works as an Associate Professor in Development Studies at Massey University New Zealand, after a professional career in development practice. Most of his research revolves around health and education services as spaces where small, rural, or remote communities negotiate their relationships with big metropolitan powers.