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. Four InfraNorth-related sessions are included:

Philipp Budka, Giuseppe Amatulli, and Ria-Maria Adams are organizing the workshop “Building Tomorrow: Exploring Infrastructures and Futurities.” This session 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 workshop “Arctic Sustainability Revisited: Mixing Methods to Study Communities in Transition.” This 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 workshop “History of an Opening and Handling of a Closure: Possible Ways of Social Anthropological Research on Russia Today.” This 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.

Alexandra Meyer and Susanna Gartler are organizing the workshop “Anthropology and climate change: The potentials and pitfalls of Anthropocene engagements.” This session seeks to explore what Anthropology can gain from grappling with climate change and the Anthropocene. It welcomes both conceptual and empirical contributions examining the theoretical and/or methodological opportunities and challenges inherent in such engagement.

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

Apr 16, 2025: Presentation by Philipp Budka at the Manitoba Museum

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 […]

Apr 8, 2025: Nunatsiaq News Features Research by Katrin Schmid

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 […]

Apr 9, 2025: Community Talk by Philipp Budka in Churchill, Manitoba

On April 9, 2025, from 7:00 to 8:00 PM CDT (GMT-5), Philipp Budka will present a talk titled “Navigating Change: How Transport Infrastructure Shapes Life in Churchill” at the Theatre of the Town Centre Complex in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. As part of this community event, the InfraNorth researcher will explore how transport infrastructures both shape […]

Arctic Science Summit Week 2024

Mar 20–28, 2025: InfraNorth at the Arctic Science Summit Week 2025

InfraNorth researchers Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk, Alexandra Meyer, Ria-Maria Adams, and Susanna Gartler will participate in the Arctic Science Summit Week 2025 (ASSW) from 20 to 28 March 2025 at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. This year’s summit, themed “Arctic Research Planning for the Next Decade,” will include the 4th International Conference on Arctic […]