By Olga Povoroznyuk and Ilya Krylov On February 17-24 this year, the University of Vienna hosted by far the largest international interdisciplinary Arctic research forum and a meeting point for scholars, artists, Indigenous peoples and more – the Arctic Science Summit Week. Members of InfraNorth research team enthusiastically took this opportunity to present the project […]

By Alexis Sancho Reinoso These lines summarize a series of personal thoughts from a geographer who had the opportunity to participate in the Biannual Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society. The event took place on March 21-23 in Rovaniemi, the capital of Finnish Lapland, and it was incredibly well organized by the Anthropology Research Team […]

By Philipp Budka Tourism is big in Churchill, a town of 870 people situated at the junction of the boreal forest, the Subarctic tundra, and the Hudson Bay in Northern Manitoba, Canada. And tourism is closely entangled with transport infrastructures, such as roads, trails, railway, and airport. Through these infrastructures, tourists are able to reach […]

By Elena Davydova and Vladimir Davydov This blog post is based on field studies conducted in winter 2017, summer 2018, and spring 2019. While fieldwork in all our Russian fieldsites is placed on hold, we wanted to show with this post where our fieldwork would have taken us to expand on our existing knowledge. In […]

By Peter Schweitzer and Olga Povoroznyuk As most of the world, our project team – the one leading InfraNorth – was shocked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022. This unprovoked aggression seems to have ended more than 30 years of productive collaboration between Soviet/Russian and western anthropologists, at least on the institutional […]

By Ria-Maria Adams and Mia Bennett Iron ore is fundamental to modernity from scales microscopic to monumental. Embedded within the glittery makeup we wear, the cell phones we carry, the bridges we cross, and the railways we ride, the ferrous mineral is a vital component to an infinite number of products. With the world population […]

By Katrin Schmid There is a double basketball court across the street from Northmart grocery store in Iqaluit, the capital of Nunavut Territory in Canada. During the summer of 2022, the court was missing a hoop and backboard, but the missing infrastructure is not what is of note here. From the outside these games look […]

By Timothy Heleniak The Arctic countries have taken different approaches to categorizing people by race, ethnicity, nationality, or other identity characteristics, including a concept of indigeneity. Because of past migrations, the percent of Indigenous residents in Arctic regions differs considerably. These groups have been significantly impacted by non-indigenous populations, including through large-scale infrastructure projects. This […]

By Philipp Budka I wake up because a bright light is shining directly in my face. For a second, I am not sure where I am. Then I remember: I am in Canada, in the province of Manitoba, on the train from the capital Winnipeg to the small northern town of Churchill at the Hudson […]

By Alexis Sancho Reinoso and Timothy Heleniak In this blog post, we explain how InfraNorth plans to contribute to the long tradition of mapping the Arctic regions by providing local-scale portraits on how local communities engage with existing and planned transport infrastructures in times of environmental, economic and geopolitical concerns in the whole region. A […]

Ria-Maria Adams & Mia Bennett Each November as the snow starts to fall in northern Finland, the city of Rovaniemi begins to prepare for the annual Christmas tourism season. From Europe, the Middle East, and more recently Asia, visitors travel to the capital of Lapland to experience the magic of Christmas in real life. When […]