Apr 5, 2024: Call for Papers for InfraNorth Workshops at VANDA 2024

The 4th Vienna Anthropology Days – VANDA conference, which will be held at the University of Vienna (23 – 26 September 2024), has just opened its call for papers. Three InfraNorth-related sessions are included:

Philipp Budka, Giuseppe Amatulli, and Ria-Maria Adams are organizing the workshop “Building Tomorrow: Exploring Infrastructures and Futurities.” The workshop invites contributors to discuss the relationships between specifically large-scale infrastructures and futurities – affective and ideologically loaded desires, or fears of being in the future – by reflecting on two questions: (1) What role do futurities play in the imagining, conceiving, and making of infrastructures and their futures? (2) How do infrastructural futurities shape the relationship between infrastructure development and sociocultural lifeworlds?

Olga Povoroznyuk and Mia Landauer (REBOUND) are organizing the roundtable “Arctic Sustainability Revisited: Mixing Methods to Study Communities in Transition.” The roundtable will discuss challenges and best practices of anthropological and social science research on Arctic sustainability and communities in transition. It will assemble anthropologists and other social scientists to discuss these and other ethical and methodological questions drawing on their research practices in the Arctic and beyond.

Stefan Krist, Elena Davydova, Olga Povoroznyuk, and Peter Schweitzer are organizing the panel “History of an Opening and Handling of a Closure: Possible Ways of Social Anthropological Research on Russia Today.” The panel aims to discuss different ways social anthropological research on Russia can be conducted in light of the ongoing war and invites contributions that reflect on experiences of switching to or applying alternative approaches to “being there” methods, the role of digital media/technologies in research, as well as reassessments of data collected in Russia before the war and/or the history of countries’ openings and closures to “outside” inquiries in general.

The deadline for submissions is June 1st, 2024. More information can be found here.

Logo of InfraNorth

May 10, 2024: Presentation by Peter Schweitzer at the 2nd Polar Waalem Seminar

InfraNorth’s principal investigator Peter Schweitzer was a guest speaker at the 2nd Polar Waalem Seminar. Under the title “Green Technologies in Climate and Polar Research,” the event was held on May 10 – 11, 2024, at the Waalem estate on the German North Sea island of Föhr. His presentation, “Arctic Residents and Change: Economic Development, […]

May 7, 2024: Talk by Peter Schweitzer at the Arctic Circle Berlin Forum

InfraNorth’s principal investigator Peter Schweitzer gave a talk at the 2024 Arctic Circle Berlin Forum, as part of a session titled “Climate Change in Polar and High-Altitude Regions.” His contribution focused on anthropological perspectives on Arctic and Alpine climate change, including the role of (transport) infrastructures. The session also featured Frederik Paulsen, the board chair […]

Apr 24, 2024: Presentation by Olga Povoroznyuk and Peter Schweitzer at Nome Coordinated Research Consortium Workshop

On April 24, Olga Povoroznyuk and Peter Schweitzer presented online the preliminary results of their InfraNorth fieldwork in Nome, Alaska at a workshop hosted by the Nome Coordinated Research Consortium (NCRC). The workshop aimed to discuss the present and future of Nome, considering transport infrastructure (such as the projected deep-draft port), mining, tourism, and climate […]

Call for Papers: InfraNorth Workshops at VANDA Conference 2024

Apr 5, 2024: Call for Papers for InfraNorth Workshops at VANDA 2024

The 4th Vienna Anthropology Days – VANDA conference, which will be held at the University of Vienna (23 – 26 September 2024), has just opened its call for papers. Three InfraNorth-related sessions are included: Philipp Budka, Giuseppe Amatulli, and Ria-Maria Adams are organizing the workshop “Building Tomorrow: Exploring Infrastructures and Futurities.” The workshop invites contributors […]

Cover of "Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology"

Mar 27, 2024: Article by Alexandra Meyer and Zdenka Sokolíčková in “Ethnos”

The latest issue of Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology has published the article ‘Melting Worlds’ and ‘Climate Myths’: Diverging Stories of Climate Change in Longyearbyen, an Arctic ‘Frontline Community’ by Alexandra Meyer and Zdenka Sokolíčková. Climate change is a powerful story in Longyearbyen, the largest settlement on Svalbard in the high Arctic. While most natural science […]