Jan 9, 2025: Presentation by Olga Povoroznyuk and Peter Schweitzer at the RATIC Arctic Infrastructure Science Talks Series

Peter Schweitzer and Olga Povoroznyuk were guest speakers at the 2024-2025 RATIC
“Arctic Infrastructure Science Talks”.

Peter Schweitzer and Olga Povoroznyuk were recently invited as guest speakers of the RATIC Arctic Infrastructure Science Talks, a short series of online talks hosted by Jana Peirce (Alaska Geobotany Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks) in preparation for the Arctic Science Summit Week 2025 and the ICARP IV Summit. Each talk is followed by time for discussion that focuses on research priorities for the next 10 years. Their talk aimed to provide an overview of recent developments in anthropological research on infrastructure, keeping a regional focus on the Arctic and providing empirical examples from their past and ongoing research projects.

Povoroznyuk and Schweitzer noted that “it has been only recently that the social sciences and humanities have engaged with infrastructure in earnest,” and that “anthropology was a latecomer to infrastructure studies, but more recently there has been a veritable explosion of anthropological literature on the subject.” For them, a main thrust of anthropological research has been conducted to show how infrastructures become terrains for political engagement. Thus, social anthropology explores infrastructure as political and modernization projects and social agents: “It focuses on infrastructure imaginaries, promises, and processes of (mal)functioning, ruination, and reconstruction to investigate cultural dynamics and social conflicts and movements,” they said.

According to both InfraNorth researchers, social scientists and anthropologists focusing on Arctic infrastructure have been studying entanglements between local and Indigenous communities and infrastructure in the contexts of rapid climate change, remoteness, and resource extraction. “While there is a long history of social impact assessments of development projects, anthropologists and other social scientists working in the Arctic, should focus more on social configurations of privileges and inequalities resulting from the affordances and “fly-over” effects of infrastructure, as well as on different forms of knowledge produced by infrastructure,” they argued.

The international multidisciplinary research network, Rapid Arctic Transitions due to Infrastructure and Climate (RATIC), is an initiative of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC).

Oct 1, 2025: InfraNorth Presentations at the 2025 GASCA Conference “Un/Commoning Anthropology”

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 […]

10th EUGEO Congress Vienna 2025

Sep 10, 2025: Presentation by Alexis Sancho Reinoso at the EUGEO Congress 2025

At the EUGEO Congress 2025 in Vienna, held at the Austrian Academy of Sciences from September 8 to 11, Alexis Sancho Reinoso will present a paper co-authored with Timothy Heleniak: “Turning the Faroes Into One City. Demographic and Spatial Impacts of 60 Years of Transport Infrastructure Expansion.” The paper presents findings from their research in […]

Jul 2025: Presentation by Philipp Budka at EASA Workshop “Past Tense, Future Imperfect”

InfraNorth researcher Philipp Budka presented the paper “Navigating Temporalities, Infrastructure, and Uncertain Futures: Scenario Workshops in Churchill, Canada” at the workshop “Past Tense, Future Imperfect: Temporalities as Mobilising Force.” The two-day event, held in hybrid format from July 23 to 24, 2025, was organized by the EASA networks NAoHH (Anthropology of History and Heritage) and […]

Jun 2025: Article by Jolynna Sinanan, Ria-Maria Adams & Philipp Budka in “Visual Anthropology”

The peer-reviewed academic journal Visual Anthropology has just published the article “Framing Multipolar Tourism: Imaginaries, Visualities and Futures,” written jointly by Jolynna Sinanan (University of Manchester) and InfraNorth researchers Ria-Maria Adams and Philipp Budka.   The article examines multipolar iconography and how imaginaries of remote, climate-vulnerable places have materialized through improved transport, enhanced accommodation facilities, […]

Jun 17, 2025: Panel and Presentation by Ria-Maria Adams at the Finnish Anthropological Society Conference 2025

InfraNorth researcher Ria-Maria Adams will be convening a panel and presenting a paper at the 2025 Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society in Helsinki. This year’s conference, which marks the Society’s 50th anniversary, will be held under the theme Comparisons in Helsinki from June 16 to 18, 2025. The panel session “Rethinking Infrastructure through […]