May 7, 2024: Talk by Peter Schweitzer at the Arctic Circle Berlin Forum
Peter Schweitzer gives a talk at the Arctic Circle Berlin Forum 2024.
InfraNorth’s principal investigator Peter Schweitzer gave a talk at the 2024 Arctic Circle Berlin Forum, as part of a session titled “Climate Change in Polar and High-Altitude Regions.” His contribution focused on anthropological perspectives on Arctic and Alpine climate change, including the role of (transport) infrastructures.
The session also featured Frederik Paulsen, the board chair of the University of the Arctic; Birgit Sattler, a limnologist at the Department of Ecology, University of Innsbruck; Arwyn Edwards, a microbiologist at the Department of Life Sciences, Aberystwyth University; and Jérôme Chappellaz, a glaciologist at the SENSE laboratory of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). Antje Boetius, director of the Alfred Wegener Institute, and Heidemarie Kassens, senior researcher at the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research, were the moderators. The session was organized by the German Society of Polar Research, the Austrian Polar Research Institute, the University of Vienna, and the Alfred Wegener Institute. It was held on 7 March at 13:30 CEST in the main hall of the Radialsystem Culture and Event Centre.
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 Austrian public broadcaster Österreichischer Rundfunk (ORF) featured InfraNorth principal investigator Peter Schweitzer in an interview on its Ö1 weekend feuilleton “Diagonal” on December 6, 2025, which focused on the politics of infrastructure. Schweitzer appeared in a segment titled “A Silk Road Across the Arctic” (in German: Seidenstrasse über die Arktis), interviewed by Erich Klein […]
The forthcoming special issue “Ethnographies of Infrastructure” of the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, guest edited by Philipp Budka, Peter Schweitzer, and Olga Povoroznyuk, is progressively being made available online ahead of the print edition, which will appear in February 2026. The introduction, authored by Schweitzer, Povoroznyuk, and Budka, is now available open-access. It presents the […]
The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography has recently published the article “Scenarios and Ethnography: Infrastructural Futures as Windows into the Present” by Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk, Philipp Budka, Alexandra Meyer, Katrin Schmid, and Nikita Strelkovskii. This article reflects on two scenario workshops conducted in 2023 in Kirkenes, Norway, and Churchill, Canada, as part of the ERC […]
Peter Schweitzer, principal investigator of InfraNorth and board member of the Austrian Polar Research Institute, has been appointed to the Executive Committee (EXCOM) of the European Polar Board (EPB). His election took place during the Board’s autumn plenary meeting on November 18–19, 2025, which was hosted on the campus of the TÜBİTAK Polar Research Institute […]
The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography has published the article “Amazon in the Arctic: E-Commerce, Infrastructure, and Alimentary Assemblages in Nunavut, Canada” by InfraNorth researcher Katrin Schmid. Since establishing a delivery hub in Iqaluit, Nunavut in 2020, Amazon.com, Inc. has become an essential resource for many Nunavut residents, providing affordable access to goods otherwise constrained by […]
