The chapter “What difference does a railroad make?” by Olga Povoroznyuk and Peter Schweitzer is focusing on the impact of the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline (BAM) in Eastern Siberia in the 1970s-1980s. Special attention is paid to the role of the cities of Tynda and Severobaikalsk which were founded along the BAM at that […]

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.

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 […]

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.

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)

The town of Tiksi came into being in the 1930s, when the Soviet Union intensified its efforts to industrialize the Arctic. A critical element of that policy was to make the Northern Sea Route a viable Arctic shipping lane and Tiksi, located where the Lena River meets the Arctic Ocean, became an important transportation hub […]