The ceremony began with live music and a speech by student Carolina Sandoval Marmolejo. Following that, Elin Bommenel, the program director of the Master's program, presented the honorary award for the best Master's thesis in Service Management.
The thesis, titled: “Dog-sledding in Lapland. Negotiating the authenticity of a borrowed tradition” was authored by Anna Charlotte Kanst Plougmann, a student from the Tourism and Culture Development Erasmus programme.
The motivation for the thesis was as follows:
This thesis focuses on a new form of tourism introduced in Sapmi during the latest decades, dog sledding. As an imported tradition, alien to Nordic and Sami heritage, its introduction raises important issues related to authenticity, territoriality and indigenous rights. The author addresses these issues through an interview study of entrepreneurs in the dog sledding business, revealing a complex web of relations between individuals, groups of people, traditions, nature and land. The following analysis is exceptionally well performed and give input to issues with considerable theoretical and political relevance.
Later, all Master's students were called up on stage and received congratulations and a diploma from the Deputy Dean, Björn Badersten.
