Jan 10, 2024: Article in the 2023 Lychnos Special Issue on “Arctic Dreams”
The 2023 edition of the yearbook Lychnos: Annual of the Swedish History of Science Society, published by The Swedish Society for the History of Science and Ideas, has just been released in print and online. This thematic issue on “Arctic Dreams,” co-edited by Janina Priebe and Nina Wormbs, includes an article co-authored by Julie Michelle Klinger, Mia M. Bennett, Ria-Maria Adams, and Eleanor Sophie Armstrong, titled: “The crowded and empty Arctic: Examining research practices, spatial imaginaries, and infrastructures in Kiruna, Sweden.”
In the article, four foreign researchers with research commitments in Kiruna, Sweden, reflexively examine the imaginaries of Kiruna as either empty or crowded while problematizing the Arctic as a homogenous region. While their scholarly interests (mining, space, education, transport infrastructure) and disciplines are distinct, they reflect on how their convergence in the city indicates broader historical shifts in Arctic imaginaries and the political economies of research, which follow and shape climate geopolitics, development, and cultural practices. In the interstices of these currents, the Arctic – imagined as empty and remote from global metropoles – becomes crowded and connected through mobility to and from as well as within the Arctic, which shapes processes of knowledge production.
The full yearbook is open access and can be read online here.
