“We build a railroad and the railroad builds us.” This idea gave title to Olga Povoroznyuk’s talk at the sowi:doc 2023 Awards ceremony of the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences (ViDSS).
Dr. Povoroznyuk, one of this year’s award winners, talked about her dissertation “Soviet infrastructure in the post-Soviet era? Building a railroad and identity along the Baikal–Amur Mainline in East Siberia,” which delved into the role of large-scale infrastructure projects as embodiments of state modernization and identity-building processes. Drawing on her case study of the Baikal-Amur Mainline, a railroad line built in the 1970s and 1980s in East Siberia, she explored how this transportation infrastructure shaped socialist communities and identities and remains a powerful medium for transmitting ideologies and memories in the post-socialist politics of identity and emotion.
Also speaking at the event were the other two award winners, Etienne Schneider and Marlis Stubenvoll, and three students of the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences. The welcome addresses were given by Manuela Baccarini, vice-rector for research and international affairs at the University of Vienna, Hajo Boomgaarden, dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Sophie Lecheler, spokesperson of the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences.
InfraNorth researchers contribute two chapters to the forthcoming book Arctic Silk Roads: An Anthropology of the Unbuilt, edited by Natalia Magnani and Matthew Magnani. The volume will be published by Berghahn Books in January 2026 as part of the Studies in the Circumpolar North series. As climate change accelerates, the melting of sea ice is […]
The forthcoming special issue “Ethnographies of Infrastructure” of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, guest edited by Philipp Budka, Peter Schweitzer, and Olga Povoroznyuk, is progressively being made available online ahead of the print edition, which will appear in February 2026. The introduction, authored by Schweitzer, Povoroznyuk, and Budka, is now available open-access. It presents the […]
Peter Schweitzer, principal investigator of InfraNorth and board member of the Austrian Polar Research Institute, has been appointed to the Executive Committee (EXCOM) of the European Polar Board (EPB). His election took place during the Board’s autumn plenary meeting on November 18–19, 2025, which was hosted on the campus of the TÜBİTAK Polar Research Institute […]
The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography has published the article “Amazon in the Arctic: E-Commerce, Infrastructure, and Alimentary Assemblages in Nunavut, Canada” by InfraNorth researcher Katrin Schmid. Since establishing a delivery hub in Iqaluit, Nunavut in 2020, Amazon.com, Inc. has become an essential resource for many Nunavut residents, providing affordable access to goods otherwise constrained by […]
The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography recently published the article “Toward a Comparative Ethnography of Arctic Seaports Projects: Local Impacts of Expanding Maritime Infrastructure in Alaska, Norway, and Russia” by InfraNorth researcher Olga Povoroznyuk. In this article, the author’s comparative ethnography focuses on suspended seaport expansion projects in three Arctic coastal communities: Nome (USA), Kirkenes (Norway), […]
The quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal Polar Geography has just released the article “No room in the North: housing scarcity as infrastructure’s failed relations in the Arctic” by InfraNorth researchers Katrin Schmid and Ria-Maria Adams. The article examines the entanglements of housing infrastructure, economic structures, and social relations in Arctic regions, focusing on Nunavut (Canada) and […]
