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.

Oct 1, 2025: InfraNorth Presentations at the 2025 GASCA Conference “Un/Commoning Anthropology”

On October 1, 2025, InfraNorth researchers Philipp Budka, Elena Davydova, Katrin Schmid and Susanna Gartler will present at the 2025 conference of the German Association for Social and Cultural Anthropology (GASCA/DGKSA). This year’s edition will be held from September 29 to October 2, 2025, at the University of Köln, under the theme “Un/Commoning Anthropology.” Temporalities […]

Jul 2025: Presentation by Philipp Budka at EASA Workshop “Past Tense, Future Imperfect”

InfraNorth researcher Philipp Budka presented the paper “Navigating Temporalities, Infrastructure, and Uncertain Futures: Scenario Workshops in Churchill, Canada” at the workshop “Past Tense, Future Imperfect: Temporalities as Mobilising Force.” The two-day event, held in hybrid format from July 23 to 24, 2025, was organized by the EASA networks NAoHH (Anthropology of History and Heritage) and […]

Jun 2025: Article by Jolynna Sinanan, Ria-Maria Adams & Philipp Budka in “Visual Anthropology”

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, […]

Jun 17, 2025: Panel and Presentation by Ria-Maria Adams at the Finnish Anthropological Society Conference 2025

InfraNorth researcher Ria-Maria Adams will be convening a panel and presenting a paper at the 2025 Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society in Helsinki. This year’s conference, which marks the Society’s 50th anniversary, will be held under the theme Comparisons in Helsinki from June 16 to 18, 2025. The panel session “Rethinking Infrastructure through […]

Jun 5, 2025: Keynote Speech by Philipp Budka at the IDSF 2025 Social-Science Track

InfraNorth researcher Philipp Budka was the keynote speaker 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.” The forum, hosted by the Vienna Centre for Societal Security (VICESSE) and the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, convened […]

May 28, 2025: Le Nunavoix Features Research by Katrin Schmid

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 […]