March 22, 2022: Webinar with Peter Schweitzer “Crossroads, Ice Curtain & Chokepoint: Bering Strait Over Time”

Webinar with Peter Schweitzer

The Bering Strait, the body of water that both separates and binds together the USA and the Russian Federation, has been an area of heightened world historical significance ever since it formed a land bridge between Northeast Asia and Northwest North America at the end of the last Ice Age that enabled the peopling of the Americas. Despite these deep historical connections, the talk will focus on the region’s more recent history since the late 19th century. This history has been characterized by indigenous cultural contacts, imperial ambitions, resource extraction, as well as infrastructural projects and plans. The story of these entanglements will be told along the lines of several research projects led by the speaker and spanning the last 30 years, ranging from “Traveling Between Continents” to “Moved by the State” to “Building Arctic Futures (InfraNorth)”. The latter, a recently commenced ERC project, focuses on the nexus between transport infrastructures and the well-being of Arctic communities. The Bering Strait is a chokepoint for Arctic maritime traffic between the Atlantic and the Pacific, no matter whether transportation is routed via the Northern Sea Route or the Northwest Passage. While the geopolitical and strategic significance of the Bering Strait has been great throughout the 20th century, the invasion of the Ukraine will undoubtedly lead to making the 80 kilometres separating Russia from its eastern neighbour into even more volatile waters. Notwithstanding these global dimensions, the talk will be anthropological in nature and focus on the local scale.

March 22, 14:00 (13:00 CEST)

University of Helsinki Website

Zoom Link

Nov 28: Presentation by Philipp Budka at STS Austria Conference 2023

Philipp Budka will present on ownership and control in transport infrastructure projects in Northern Manitoba, Canada, in the session “The Politics of Open Infrastructures” at the STS Austria Conference 2023. The conference will take place at the Austrian Academy of Sciences from Nov 27-29, 2023. Program

Nov 27, 2023: Lecture by Olga Povoroznyuk & Peter Schweitzer at TU Vienna

Olga Povoroznyuk and Peter Schweitzer will give a guest lecture on “The Social Lives of Transport Infrastructures in the Arctic” at the Technical University of Vienna. The lecture includes insights from their InfraNorth research and will be part of the module “Emerging Fields in Architecture”, which seeks to put design into a broader social context. […]

Nov 17, 2023: Session by Philipp Budka & Giuseppe Amatulli at AAA/CASCA 2023

Giuseppe Amatulli (Carlton University) & Philipp Budka (InfraNorth, University of Vienna) organize the session “Narratives and Temporalities of Infrastructure: The Canadian Experience” at the meeting of the American Anthropological Association (AAA) & the Canadian Anthropology Society (CASCA). The conference will take place from November 15-19, 2023 in Toronto.

Nov 8-9, 2023: InfraNorth at APRI’s 10th Anniversary Meeting

Peter Schweitzer and several other InfraNorth members will co-present their research at APRI’s Polar Talk N9 on November 8. Polar Talk Flyer Olga Povoroznyuk will give a presentation entitled “InfraNorth Future Scenarios for Arctic Communities” at the APRI Assembly Meeting on November 9. APRI Meeting Program Flyer

Nov, 2023: InfraNorth Presentations at AAA/CASCA 2023

InfraNorth will have three paper presentations at the Meeting of the American Anthropological Association / Canadian Anthropology Society/Société canadienne d’anthropologie in Toronto, Canada, November 15-19, 2023: Olga Povoroznyuk & Peter Schweitzer with a paper entitled “Whose sovereignty? Promises and threats of a port expansion project in Nome, Alaska” Katrin Schmid with a paper titled “Gravel, […]