Ivalu leads the agreements that determine who asks a research question, who controls the resulting data, and how a project remains accountable after field activity ends.
Her work begins before a proposal is treated as settled. Ivalu asks whether a community identified the need, whether participation is genuinely optional, and whether local expertise changes the method rather than merely decorating it. She treats consent as an ongoing relationship with clear routes to revise, pause, or decline work.
Education
Ivalu holds an MA in Indigenous Governance from the University of Victoria and a BA in Social Science from the University of Greenland. Her studies focused on public authority, research ethics, institutional history, and the practical consequences of decisions about ownership, access, and representation.
Experience
She has developed consent-based research and data-governance agreements for collaborative projects. Her experience includes translating broad ethical commitments into specific decisions about access levels, review, attribution, storage, and future reuse. She is attentive to the unpaid labor that partnerships can demand and to the difference between consultation and shared authority.
Current focus
Her current focus is governance that remains usable in ordinary project work. She wants field plans, repositories, publication reviews, and budgets to reflect the same commitments stated in partnership agreements. She also presses for capacity funding, local control over sensitive knowledge, and clear records of decisions when teams or institutions change.
Beyond work
Away from work, Ivalu sea-kayaks in settled conditions and records family stories only with explicit permission. She values the pauses in a conversation as much as the words. Her own notebooks distinguish what may be shared, what needs review, and what belongs only with the person who offered it.