Like many airports throughout the Arctic, Kulusuk Airport, the entrance to the sparsely populated East Coast of Greenland, is built on the remnants of past military activities and is located some distance from the regional capital, Tasiilaq. For years, there have been discussions regarding the construction of a new airport in Tasiilaq to improve connectivity and reduce dependence on helicopter flights. Throughout the East Coast, many residents feel that they are looked down upon by the (West) Greenlandic population and are given little priority in the political and economic decisions taking place in the faraway national capital of Nuuk, which feeds into residents’ attitudes towards the ever-suspended airport plans. Many residents place great hope on this plan, as this “infrastructural hope” (Reeves 2017) includes economic and social possibilities and an improvement of the region’s status both within the country and abroad. On the other hand, in the village of Kulusuk, near the current airport, people fear the repercussions of this new airport.
Elixhauser explores the hopes, fears, and affect generated by and embedded within infrastructure, considering issues of remoteness, social and physical connectivity, “infrastructural violence” (Rodgers and O’Neill 2012), and residents’ future imaginaries and historical experiences in (post-)colonial Greenland. Describing the socio-material dynamics of hope and connectivity, the article shows how aviation infrastructure is never just about the physical infrastructure but is always enabled by and embedded in societal processes.
InfraNorth researchers Philipp Budka and Katrin Schmid will present their work at the 46th Annual Conference of the Canadian Studies Association in the 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 […]
Two members of the InfraNorth team, Timothy Heleniak (a senior research fellow at Nordregio) and Ria-Maria Adams, will participate in the 6th Nordic Rural Research Conference, held in Kiruna, Finland, from December 3-5. This year’s conference theme is “New Pathways to Sustainable Transitions?” Timothy Heleniak is coordinating working group 1.1, “The benefits of migration in […]
On Monday, December 2, 2024, at 19:00 CET, Peter Schweitzer, Olga Povoroznyuk, and Stanislav Saas Ksenofontov (Indigenous Sakha social scientist, Postdoctoral scholar at the University of Northern Iowa), will be guest speakers in the CRAFT webinar series “Engaging Social Sciences and Indigenous Perspectives in Arctic Infrastructure Research.” The event will be streamed live on Facebook. […]
