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.”
InfraNorth researchers contribute two chapters to the forthcoming book Arctic Silk Roads: An Anthropology of the Unbuilt, edited by Natalia Magnani and Matthew Magnani. The volume will be published by Berghahn Books in January 2026 as part of the Studies in the Circumpolar North series. As climate change accelerates, the melting of sea ice is […]
The Austrian public broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) featured InfraNorth principal investigator Peter Schweitzer in an interview on its Ö1 weekend feuilleton “Diagonal” on December 6, 2025, which focused on the politics of infrastructure. Schweitzer appeared in a segment titled “A Silk Road Across the Arctic” (in German: Seidenstrasse über die Arktis), interviewed by Erich Klein […]
The forthcoming special issue “Ethnographies of Infrastructure” of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, guest edited by Philipp Budka, Peter Schweitzer, and Olga Povoroznyuk, is progressively being made available online ahead of the print edition, which will appear in February 2026. The introduction, authored by Schweitzer, Povoroznyuk, and Budka, is now available open-access. It presents the […]
The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography has recently published the article “Scenarios and Ethnography: Infrastructural Futures as Windows into the Present” by Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk, Philipp Budka, Alexandra Meyer, Katrin Schmid, and Nikita Strelkovskii. This article reflects on two scenario workshops conducted in 2023 in Kirkenes, Norway, and Churchill, Canada, as part of the ERC […]
Peter Schweitzer, principal investigator of InfraNorth and board member of the Austrian Polar Research Institute, has been appointed to the Executive Committee (EXCOM) of the European Polar Board (EPB). His election took place during the Board’s autumn plenary meeting on November 18–19, 2025, which was hosted on the campus of the TÜBİTAK Polar Research Institute […]
The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography has published the article “Amazon in the Arctic: E-Commerce, Infrastructure, and Alimentary Assemblages in Nunavut, Canada” by InfraNorth researcher Katrin Schmid. Since establishing a delivery hub in Iqaluit, Nunavut in 2020, Amazon.com, Inc. has become an essential resource for many Nunavut residents, providing affordable access to goods otherwise constrained by […]
