Apr 8, 2025: Nunatsiaq News Features Research by Katrin Schmid
Screenshot from Nunatsiaq News, April 8, 2025. Photo by Philipp Budka.
InfraNorth team member Katrin Schmid’s recent presentation on transport infrastructure and food sovereignty in Nunavut was featured in Nunatsiaq News, a local newspaper in the region. Schmid shared her findings at the Nunatta Sunakkutaangit Museum in Iqaluit on April 8, 2025, in a public presentation titled “Country Food Cargo: How Transport Infrastructure Shapes Food Sovereignty in Nunavut.”
The Nunatsiaq News article, written by reporter Nehaa Bimal, highlights Schmid’s research in Iqaluit, Kimmirut, Pond Inlet, Resolute Bay, and Grise Fiord during 2022 and 2023. Throughout her fieldwork, the InfraNorth researcher conducted around 170 interviews with hunters, community leaders, civil servants, airport staff, shipping workers, and others. Her findings emphasize ongoing challenges in moving country food, particularly issues like spoilage, delays, and inadequate infrastructure for hunters.
Schmid’s research aims to foster conversations about the role of transport infrastructure in supporting or hindering access to country food in the region. As Nunatsiaq News noted, her findings rely heavily on direct quotes from community members and also include “several policy recommendations, including expanding regional cold storage hubs, modifying air cargo subsidies to support small businesses and co-operatives, and ensuring infrastructure developed for industry or defence is also accessible to local communities.”
The peer-reviewed academic journal Visual Anthropology has just published the article “Framing Multipolar Tourism: Imaginaries, Visualities and Futures,” written jointly by Jolynna Sinanan (University of Manchester) and InfraNorth researchers Ria-Maria Adams and Philipp Budka. The article examines multipolar iconography and how imaginaries of remote, climate-vulnerable places have materialized through improved transport, enhanced accommodation facilities, […]
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InfraNorth researcher Philipp Budka will deliver the keynote address for the Social Science Track at the International Digital Security Forum (IDSF) 2025, held under the theme “Sovereignty and Solidarity in the Digital Age – a critical view.” Hosted by the Vienna Centre for Societal Security (VICESSE) and the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, it will […]
A recent article written by journalist Karine Lavoie for Le Nunavoix, a French-language community newspaper published in Nunavut, reports on the recent visit of InfraNorth researcher Katrin Schmid to Nunavut, where she presented the findings of her research on transportation infrastructure and food sovereignty in Nunavut. Schmid’s report “Country Food Cargo: Transport Infrastructure and Food […]
The University of Vienna’s research magazine, Rudolphina, recently featured Peter Schweitzer, principal investigator of InfraNorth, and his long-standing anthropological engagement with Arctic communities. Schweitzer’s research focuses on issues related to the built environment, mobility, remoteness, and the social impacts of climate change on community life in the Arctic. The article, which includes a video interview […]
InfraNorth team member Philipp Budka will deliver a public presentation of his research titled “Infrastructural Sovereignty and the Social Life of Transport: Ethnographic Insights from Northern Manitoba, Canada” on Wednesday, April 16, from 12:00 to 1:00 PM (GMT-5) at the Manitoba Museum Auditorium in Winnipeg, Canada. Churchill, Manitoba—a remote Subarctic town of approximately 870 residents—offers […]
