Jan 25, 2024: The Doctoral School Approves Elena Davydova’s Dissertation Project
Chukotka Warehouse Garage. Photo by Elena Davydova.
Elena Davydova’s doctoral dissertation project has been approved by the advisory board of the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences (ViDSS), University of Vienna, after a successful Fakultätsöffentliche Präsentation. In this public presentation of PhD thesis projects, candidates present their research proposals and their related ethical considerations to the faculty staff. It is an important step at the doctoral studies, and a requisite for the approval of the topic and supervision of the project, which enables its continuation.
Her dissertation project “Infrastructure and/for Sustenance: (Re)Shaping Local Foodways in Remote Russian Arctic Communities” will draw on a year of ethnographic fieldwork conducted in the Chukotka Autonomous Area (Russia) to explore the transformative potential of infrastructures in relation to food practices. In other words, how existing and ruined infrastructures contribute to the production, distribution, preparation, consumption, and utilization of food items. This research is supported by the ERC Advanced Grant project InfraNorth [Grant Agreement ID: 885646].
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 […]
