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.”
The University of Vienna’s research magazine, Rudolphina, recently featured Peter Schweitzer, principal investigator of InfraNorth, and his long-standing anthropological engagement with Arctic communities. Schweitzer’s research focuses on issues related to the built environment, mobility, remoteness, and the social impacts of climate change on community life in the Arctic. The article, which includes a video interview […]
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 […]
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 […]
International Conference, September 22 – 24, 2025, at the University of Vienna. Extended deadline for submissions: April 21, 2025. Infrastructure is often seen as solid, fixed, and inevitable while shaping the way we move, live, and connect. But what about the infrastructures that remain unfinished, abandoned, or merely imagined? How do built, un-built, or non-built […]
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 […]
The third volume of the Fractured North book series, edited by Erich Kasten, Igor Krupnik, and Gail Fondahl, has recently been released by SEC Publications, the publishing house of Kulturstiftung Sibirien. The volume includes a chapter by Olga Povoroznyuk, titled “Reconceptualizing Siberia: a personal account of a changing field.” In it, she reflects on her […]
