We invite paper proposals for our panel “High Altitudes, High Latitudes: Engaging with Cryospheric Livelihoods” at the Vienna Anthropology Days (VANDA) 2027, hosted by the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna, 16-19 February 2027.

The cryosphere, defined by frozen water in all its forms, has attracted considerable attention of late due to its vulnerability to climate change. However, despite this focus, it is unclear which social, economic and cultural transformations can be linked to changes in the climate system. Understanding these consequences requires moving beyond environmental indicators to examine how changing cryospheric conditions reshape livelihoods, mobility, knowledge systems, temporalities, relations with more-than-human beings, and forms of social organization.

This panel asks whether a comparative perspective across Arctic and mountain regions can illuminate shared dynamics of life in cryospheric environments or whether distinct historical trajectories, political economies, and sociocultural configurations produce fundamentally different responses to environmental change. Rather than assuming environmental determinism, we propose that cryospheric settings create a particular constellation of constraints and possibilities through which people negotiate everyday life, adaptation, resilience, and continuity.

The session invites contributions from anthropologists and other social scientists who have conducted research in Arctic and/or mountain environments. Comparative, ethnographic, interdisciplinary, and multispecies approaches are particularly welcome, as are collaborations with the environmental sciences. We encourage papers that move beyond documenting environmental change to examine how people perceive, interpret, negotiate, and anticipate changing cryospheric futures.

Contributions may address topics including mobility, subsistence, heritage, governance, Indigenous and local knowledge, environmental justice, human–more-than-human relations, and sensory engagements with changing landscapes.

Convenors: Peter Schweitzer, Jaroslava Panáková and Olga Povoroznyuk.

Deadline for paper proposals: 12 October 2026.

Further information and submission details are available via the VANDA 2027 Call for Papers.