“We build a railroad and the railroad builds us.” This idea gave title to Olga Povoroznyuk’s talk at the sowi:doc 2023 Awards ceremony of the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences (ViDSS).
Dr. Povoroznyuk, one of this year’s award winners, talked about her dissertation “Soviet infrastructure in the post-Soviet era? Building a railroad and identity along the Baikal–Amur Mainline in East Siberia,” which delved into the role of large-scale infrastructure projects as embodiments of state modernization and identity-building processes. Drawing on her case study of the Baikal-Amur Mainline, a railroad line built in the 1970s and 1980s in East Siberia, she explored how this transportation infrastructure shaped socialist communities and identities and remains a powerful medium for transmitting ideologies and memories in the post-socialist politics of identity and emotion.
Also speaking at the event were the other two award winners, Etienne Schneider and Marlis Stubenvoll, and three students of the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences. The welcome addresses were given by Manuela Baccarini, vice-rector for research and international affairs at the University of Vienna, Hajo Boomgaarden, dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences, and Sophie Lecheler, spokesperson of the Vienna Doctoral School of Social Sciences.
On April 9, 2025, from 7:00 to 8:00 PM CDT (GMT-5), Philipp Budka will present a talk titled “Navigating Change: How Transport Infrastructure Shapes Life in Churchill” at the Theatre of the Town Centre Complex in Churchill, Manitoba, Canada. As part of this community event, the InfraNorth researcher will explore how transport infrastructures both shape […]
InfraNorth researchers Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk, Alexandra Meyer, Ria-Maria Adams, and Susanna Gartler will participate in the Arctic Science Summit Week 2025 (ASSW) from 20 to 28 March 2025 at the University of Colorado Boulder, USA. This year’s summit, themed “Arctic Research Planning for the Next Decade,” will include the 4th International Conference on Arctic […]
InfraNorth researchers Philipp Budka and Katrin Schmid will present their work at the 46th Annual Conference of the Association for Canadian Studies in German-speaking Countries (GKS). Under the theme “The North: Changes, Challenges, Opportunities,” the conference will be held in Berlin from February 26 to March 1, 2025. Philipp Budka will participate in Panel 11, […]
Peter Schweitzer and Olga Povoroznyuk will participate in the 2025 Barents Spektakel, an annual art and culture festival in Kirkenes, Norway. In its 21st edition, the festival explores the theme “Remote Control,” fostering a cross-disciplinary exchange on the center-periphery model and the dynamics between central areas and peripheral (or remote) regions. On Friday, 21 February, […]
International Conference, September 22 – 24, 2025, at the University of Vienna. Deadline for submissions: April 6, 2025. Infrastructure is often seen as solid, fixed, and inevitable while shaping the way we move, live, and connect. But what about the infrastructures that remain unfinished, abandoned, or merely imagined? How do built, un-built, or non-built environments […]
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 […]
