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.
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 Polar Journal, which publishes policy-relevant research on polar affairs from across the social sciences and humanities, has recently released the article ‘Building transdisciplinary bridges and learning from the Svalbard context’ by Julia Olsen, Alexandra Meyer, and Lisbeth Iversen, Ulrich Schildberg, Ragnhild Holmen Bjørnsen, Grete K. Hovelsrud, James Badu, Dina Brode-Roger, Adriana Craciun, Hanne H. […]
On November 5, 2025, at 5:00 pm CET, InfraNorth researcher Philipp Budka will deliver a lecture titled “Sovereignty by Design: Community Infrastructures and Relational Futures in Remote Canada,” as part of the Wednesday Seminars, the lecture series of the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna. Budka’s talk examines infrastructural sovereignty—the […]
Olga Povoroznyuk and Peter Schweitzer presented findings from the InfraNorth project at the ARCA co-creative community workshop “Biocultural Heritage and Climate Adaptation in Arctic Cities,” held on October 7–8, 2025, at The Nave in Anchorage, Alaska. Their presentation drew connections between their recent research conducted in Anchorage and other field sites in Alaska: on the […]
A new book examining the rapid climate and geopolitical shifts in the Arctic, Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic, by Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds, has been recently published by Yale University Press and launched in London. Mia Bennett is Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Washington, founder and editor […]
On October 1, 2025, InfraNorth researchers Philipp Budka, Elena Davydova, Katrin Schmid and Susanna Gartler will present at the 2025 conference of the German Association for Social and Cultural Anthropology (GASCA/DGKSA). This year’s edition will be held from September 29 to October 2, 2025, at the University of Köln, under the theme “Un/Commoning Anthropology.” Temporalities […]
