Feb 27, 2024: Ria-Maria Adams Successfully Defends Her Doctoral Dissertation
Ria-Maria Adams has successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis “The Quest for Good Life: Well-Being of Young People in Finnish Lapland” at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna under the supervision of Peter Schweitzer (University of Vienna) and Florian Stammler (University of Lapland). Janina Kehr (University of Vienna) and Joachim Otto Habeck (University of Hamburg) acted as examiners and Cornelia Staritz (University of Vienna) chaired the public defence.
In her dissertation, Ria-Maria focuses on young people’s perspectives on well-being in northern Finland. She highlights the importance of anthropological contributions to studies on Arctic youth and urges a more nuanced understanding of young people’s aspirations when they are in the process of deciding whether to stay in or leave their rural hometowns. This research was mainly supported by the uni:docs fellowship program of the University of Vienna. The research was completed while working for the ERC Advanced Grant project InfraNorth [Project ID: 885646]. This work was also partly supported by the WOLLIE project funded by the Academy of Finland [Project ID: 314471], as well as the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland, which granted her a guest researcher status for the entire time of her research.
In Svalbard, the environment, society, and policy are changing rapidly. On April 10, 2024, a lunch seminar at the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL) discussed what these changes mean for people in Longyearbyen, and the dilemmas associated with using and protecting the environment. The seminar featured Alexandra Meyer from InfraNorth, who gave a […]
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. Three InfraNorth-related sessions are included: Philipp Budka, Giuseppe Amatulli, and Ria-Maria Adams are organizing the workshop “Building Tomorrow: Exploring Infrastructures and Futurities.” The workshop invites contributors […]
The latest issue of Ethnos: Journal of Anthropology has published the article ‘Melting Worlds’ and ‘Climate Myths’: Diverging Stories of Climate Change in Longyearbyen, an Arctic ‘Frontline Community’ by Alexandra Meyer and Zdenka Sokolíčková. Climate change is a powerful story in Longyearbyen, the largest settlement on Svalbard in the high Arctic. While most natural science […]
In a recent newspaper article, titled “Radically ordinary life” (in Finnish: Radikaalin tavallinen elämä), the Finnish national public broadcaster Yle Uutiset features an interview with Ria-Maria Adams about young people who have decided to stay in their rural hometowns. The piece also draws on her joint article with Teresa Komu. According to Adams’ Ph.D. research, […]
Olga Povoroznyuk, Alexandra Meyer, and Peter Schweitzer will represent InfraNorth at the Arctic Science Summit Week (ASSW) 2024 in Edinburgh, participating as part of the IASC Social and Human Working Group (SHWG). Their presentations are scheduled to take place during the SHWG open session on March 22, 2024, from 10:30 to 15:30 GMT at St […]
The InfraNorth project, funded by the European Research Council, is seeking a social scientist with expertise in GIS, cartography, and mixed methods for a pre-doctoral or post-doctoral position (20 hours per week, starting as soon as possible, limited until March 31, 2025), based in the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna. The […]