Olga Povoroznyuk and Howie Epstein will organize a community meeting “Towards Sustainable Infrastructure: Environmental, Technological, and Societal Impacts of Development in the Arctic” as part of IASC interdisciplinary Research Initiative “Rapid Arctic Transitions due to Infrastructure and Climate” (RATIC). The meeting will take place on February 20, 14:00 – 18:00 (GMT+1), in-person (Hörsaal 3) and […]
Kunst Haus Wien will host a panel discussion “Climate x Change – Polar Silkroad” as part of the exhibition “Unseen places“. The exhibition represents the works of Austrian photographer Gregor Sailer and is focusing on the ways in which built infrastructure has an impact on the environment. Sailer has long worked in polar areas. He […]
The ERC project InfraNorth is inviting applications for the position of an outreach expert to communicate and disseminate project related research. Deadline has been extended to February 6. For details, please navigate to the University of Vienna’s job portal.
Katrin Schmid presented a poster on her Nunavut case study at the ArcticNet Annual Scientific Meeting in Toronto, Dec. 5-9, 2022. In her research she asks how transport infrastructure can support territorial food sovereignty.
Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk and Timothy Heleniak presented their recent research at the InfraNorth session “Arctic Transport Infrastructures and Sustainable Communities” at Arctic Circle 2022, one of the largest conferences on Arctic policy and research taking place annually in Reykjavik, Iceland. The session was well-attended by researchers, indigenous leaders, representatives of NGOs and governmental bodies […]
Olga Povoroznyuk successfully defended her PhD dissertation “Soviet Infrastructure in the Post-Soviet Era? Building a Railroad and Identity along the Baikal–Amur Mainline in East Siberia”. Her cumulative dissertation introduces the notion of transformative infrastructure and focuses on the role of large-scale infrastructures as articulations of state modernization and identity building. The research was supported by […]
Interdisciplinary review article on social and environmental consequences of roads and railways led by Olga Povoroznyuk with contributions from W. Vincent, P. Schweitzer and a few other Arctic scholars is now accessible online in the Canadian journal Arctic Science https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/full/10.1139/as-2021-0033 The article features six Arctic case studies and is a result of collaboration between social […]
Olga Povoroznyuk & Philipp Budka present individual papers on transport infrastructures at the European Association of Social Anthropologists’ 17th Biennial Conference (July 26-29, 2022) in the panel “Promising Growth: Anthropological Reflections on Sprawling Infrastructure and Inequality“.
Alexis Sancho-Reinoso has created a story that combines maps, pictures, and text to tell his experiences while travelling to Luleå and Kiruna, in the Swedish northernmost region Norrbotten. The excursion took place after the InfraNorth workshop about the history of Arctic infrastructures. The storymap is available here.
The Arctic, which often has been recognized by residents of temperate climate zones for its supposed unspoiled nature, has a long history of colonization, urbanization and industrial exploitation. From the days of Arctic whaling to gold rushes and oil booms, the Arctic has a rich legacy of built environment serving as infrastructure mainly for non-arctic […]
This survey focuses on the role of transport infrastructures in Arctic and sub-Arctic communities. It is anonymous, consists of seven (7) questions, and takes about 10 minutes to complete.The survey is available at https://sosci.univie.ac.at/InfraNorthQuestionnaire/All residents in Northern communities aged 18 years or more are invited to participate in the survey!
Philipp Budka was interviewed by the Austrian Polar Research Institute (APRI) about his fieldwork in Northern Manitoba, Canada: Interview in German Interview in English (translated by APRI)