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. Four InfraNorth-related sessions are included: Philipp Budka, Giuseppe Amatulli, and Ria-Maria Adams are organizing the workshop “Building Tomorrow: Exploring Infrastructures and Futurities.” This session 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 Arctic hometowns. The piece also draws on her joint article with Teresa Komu. According to Adams’ Ph.D. […]

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 […]

Ria-Maria Adams has successfully defended her Ph.D. thesis “The Quest for Good Life: Well-Being of Young People in Finnish Lapland” at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna under the supervision of Peter Schweitzer (University of Vienna) and Florian Stammler (University of Lapland). Janina Kehr (University of Vienna) and Joachim Otto Habeck […]

Timothy Heleniak has been featured on the “Borders & Belonging” podcast (Episode 6, Season 2), hosted by Maggie Perzyna, a researcher with the Canada Excellence Research Chair in Migration and Integration, Toronto Metropolitan University. During the podcast, he highlighted the InfraNorth project and talked about his fieldwork in the Faroe Islands, when asked about the […]

Ria-Maria Adams will participate in the Arctic Frontiers 2024: Action & Reactions conference in Tromsø, Norway (Jan 29 – Feb 01, 2024). Her presentation “Young, Rural Stayers in Finnish Lapland: Decision-Making, Infrastructures & Wellbeing” will be part of the panel Empowering Arctic Citizens for Involvement in Decision-Making. Part 3, on Wednesday Jan 31, 2024 (11:30 […]

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 […]

Alexandra Meyer has successfully defended her PhD thesis “Arctic Change: An Ethnography of Entangled Climatic and Societal Transformations in Longyearbyen, Svalbard” at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Vienna. Her thesis addresses how people in Longyearbyen, Svalbard perceive, live with, and adapt to entangled socio-economic and climatic change change. The research was […]