Mar 2025: Chapter by Olga Povoroznyuk in “A Fractured North – Maintaining Connections”
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 journey in the anthropology of Siberia and the North, addressing the impact of the recently re-emerged Arctic divide on international research and contacts in this field.
In doing so, she conceptualizes Siberia and anthropological research on the region in broader geopolitical and epistemological contexts, providing a personal account of changing research topics, approaches, and practices that constituted Russian and Austrian traditions in Siberian ethnology and anthropology after the Cold War.
Povorozynuk offers a critical analysis of the intersections of industrialization, environmental degradation, and authoritarianism in shaping the socioeconomic and cultural landscapes of Siberia and the Arctic. She highlights the growing epistemological divide and the challenges facing anthropological research in these regions. Despite the complexity, the chapter concludes with a hopeful note on the potential for maintaining connections across a fractured North. The full chapter is available online and can be found on pages 89–105 of A Fractured North – Maintaining Connections.
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Dec 2025: Forthcoming Special Issue of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
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 […]
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Dec 2025: Article by Peter Schweitzer, et al. in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
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 […]
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Dec 2025: Article by Katrin Schmid in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
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 […]
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Dec 2025: Article by Olga Povoroznyuk in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography
The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography recently published the article “Toward a Comparative Ethnography of Arctic Seaports Projects: Local Impacts of Expanding Maritime Infrastructure in Alaska, Norway, and Russia” by InfraNorth researcher Olga Povoroznyuk. In this article, the author’s comparative ethnography focuses on suspended seaport expansion projects in three Arctic coastal communities: Nome (USA), Kirkenes (Norway), […]
