Areas of Interest/Research
Dr. Collings’ research focuses on the Inuit of the Canadian Arctic, primarily in the community of Ulukhaktok, where he has conducted ethnographic research since 1992. Though his research interests are varied, they revolve around themes of human development and human ecology.
Collings’ human development and adjacent research draws on traditions in psychological anthropology and the anthropology of aging, examining the influence of historical time, social change and economic success on different age cohorts, on the structure of the Inuit life course, and on Inuit conceptions of successful aging. This dimension of his research appears in his book, Becoming Inummarik, which examines how men navigate the Inuit life course in the contemporary settlement, and in more recent work on the performance of masculinity among young Inuit men.
Research more aligned with the study of human ecology addresses the economics of contemporary subsistence, the influence of externally imposed regulations on foraging activities, change and continuity in food sharing practices within the context of climate change. Recent work in this domain explores Inuit perceptions and understandings of ecological knowledge and how those understandings differ from how scientists understand them. A recent paper with Dr. Elspeth Ready of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology argues that climate change research makes incorrect a priori assumptions and consequently fails to capture aspects of Arctic socioecological systems that are essential for how Inuit are responding to climate change.