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Polar Humanities and Social Sciences Graduate Workshop: previous

Polar Humanities and Social Sciences Graduate Workshop: previous

Scott Polar Research Institute - Polar Humanities and Social Sciences ECR Workshop: archive

Return to the list of forthcoming seminars.

# Thursday 14th March 2024, 2.00pm - Naï Zakharia, PhD candidate, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
Isobel Hutchison’s Arctic Quest
Venue: Online (email organisers for details)

TBC

# Thursday 7th March 2024, 2.30pm - Aleksis Oreschnikoff, Doctoral researcher, University of Helsinki
Beyond knowledge-building: Research infrastructure, technology, and the practice of Arctic (in)security
Venue: Online (email organisers for details)

Infrastructure and technology are critical to polar research. Climate research, oceanography, or monitoring air- and seaborne pollution are fields where ground stations, remote-sensing capabilities or transport infrastructures enable scientists to collect, interpret or enhance data to generate knowledge. Moreover, building and sharing knowledge have long been considered effective practices in relations between states or multilateral governance. Enhancing scientific capabilities through infrastructural investments or technological development are key for stronger political agency in polar affairs. However, scientific cooperation and the universality of science are increasingly being challenged in light of current and emerging security challenges driven by geopolitical tension and strategic competition.
Despite the significance of evidence-based policy-making and science-policy interaction in contemporary international relations, little is still known about the role and value of scientific infrastructure and technology in political problematizations. It is relevant to examine scientific infrastructure and technology as material elements tied to changing geopolitical and strategic considerations. Recognizing interplay between infrastructure, technology and security this doctoral project explores the emergence of regional (in)security from infrastructurally and technologically situated practices. This is done by answering two interrelated and complementary sub-questions on the extent to which the use of research infrastructures and technology contribute to practices of (in)security, and on the extent to which practices of (in)security influence the use of research infrastructures and technology. The project includes three interrelated cases: ships as multi-use infrastructure, remote-sensing technology and presence, as well as ground stations as exceptional spaces of interaction. Situated within IR scholarship, the project builds on existing literature in critical security and science and technology studies, socio-materiality, geography and international political sociology. The aim is to provide theoretical, methodological, and empirical insight on pertinent issues in contemporary polar studies and international relations.

# Thursday 22nd February 2024, 2.00pm - Stephen Lezak, PhD candidate, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, Gates scholar
Infrastructural Fear: or When Climate Change Isn’t an Allegory
Venue: Hybrid: Seminar room, SPRI & Zoom - email organiser for details

Social scientists readily look for the ways in which climate change serves as an allegory or a prism through which people understand contemporary and future politics of life on Earth. In two imminently-threatened Indigenous communities in Western Alaska, climate change rarely receives such treatment. Fear of climate change is infrastructural, not existential. These rural and Indigenous vantages onto the Anthropocene challenge the tendency to extract meaning from environmental change. At the same time, they contrast with other Indigenous viewpoints, such as those that attribute climatic change to sociocultural change. In this talk, I explore what it looks like when climate change is not about anything other than itself, and the ensuing politics of pragmatism that characterise two Indigenous communities’ subsequent responses.

# Thursday 15th February 2024, 2.00pm - Liz Walsh and Morgan Ip, postdoctoral researchers, ERC Arctic Cultures Project, University of Cambridge
Arctic Museum Cultures: A Critical Perspective on Heritage Practices in/about the North
Venue: Hybrid: Seminar room, SPRI & Zoom - email organiser for details

As heritage institutions in metropolitan centres in the UK, US, and other colonial nations respond to calls for equity and the repatriation of material culture, museums in previously colonised nations have sought their own paths forward. We will discuss fieldwork carried out across multiple sites in Greenland, comparing the variety of local and national narratives, curatorial logics, and stated missions encountered in the institutions we visited. We will consider the work different kinds of museums understand themselves to do, and the audiences museums understand themselves to be for. In light of conversations with curators and community members, we will question whether museums are useful institutions in the 21st century Arctic and ask what Arctic museum futures might look like. Finally, we will discuss the process of staging the current exhibition Arctic Cultures: Collections and Imaginations, sharing our own visions of the future of critical museum practice.

# Thursday 8th February 2024, 2.00pm - Johanna Sophie Bürkert, Ph.D. fellow at Københavns University, Law Faculty
The role of international law in socio-ecological resilience to climate change of coastal Arctic communities - An international law study of the case of Arctic bowhead whaling
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

As climate change is warming the Arctic four times faster than the rest of the planet, irreversible changes to marine and terrestrial ecosystems, such as habitat shifts and species loss, are to be expected. This will lead to drastic changes in the Arctic environment, and directly affect the approximately 4 million people (10% of whom are indigenous) that call the Arctic their home. The effects of warming have been linked to shifts in bowhead whale migration, influencing timing of the hunt and availability, as well as changing sea ice conditions, which influence hunting, impacting food security and the exercise of cultural practices. Thereby, Arctic warming has both social and ecological effects, making it relevant to address it from a socio-ecological systems perspective.
Centering around the concept of climate resilience, my project aims to map out which factors in international law can contribute to coastal socio-ecological system’s resilience to climate change. Despite the importance of law in resilience governance, the role of law in governing for socio-ecological resilience has only be touched upon in brief throughout the literature. At the example of three case studies (Communities in Greenland, Alaska and Canada that undertake bowhead hunting), I evaluate where the international legal framework on climate change, biodiversity and applicable human rights poses barriers or contributes to coastal Arctic socio-ecological climate resilience.
A special focus in this presentation lies on the inclusion of western and Indigenous science on bowhead whaling and related nature conservation. Iterativity plays an important role in resilience, as the inclusion of science allows law to fit the environment in which it is set, However, the types of knowledge included matter, both for social and ecological resilience. This presentation addresses ways in which the respective treaty systems (IWC, CBD, CITES, UNCLOS, UNFCCC) address the production and inclusion of knowledge, and highlights benefits and disadvantages of the process. Moreover, the presentation expands to existing human rights to explore, whether the standards set therein can have an influence on the process to strengthen resilience.

# Thursday 30th November 2023, 5.00pm - Emilie Canova & Liz Walsh, SPRI
End of term Polar social gathering
Venue: In-person - location TBC

Come and enjoy drinks with us!

# Thursday 16th November 2023, 1.45pm - Svenja Holst (Bielefeld University); Anna Ott (Syke and University of Lapland); Anna Varfolomeeva (University of Oulu); Marlene Payva (University of Lapland)
Sustainability and the Arctic - interdisciplinary ECR workshop in Tampere
Venue: Online (contact organiser for Zoom link)

The workshop is a two-day event happening on-site at the City Centre Campus of Tampere University, in collaboration with SPRI, the Arctic Centre, and the Finnish Environment Institute (Syke). The idea is to bring ECRs and senior scholars together for an intensive workshop where an active, encouraging and constructive atmosphere is created.

The session “Human-nature relations” will be webstreamed on zoom for PHaSS, with the possibility for people online to ask questions. The zoom link will be distributed via the mailing list.

More information at https://events.tuni.fi/sustainability-and-the-arctic/

# Thursday 2nd November 2023, 2.00pm - Dr Carol Payne, Professor of Art History, Carleton University
Visual culture masterclass – Arctic Expedition Photography: Critical Perspectives, Inuit Returns
Venue: In-person - SPRI Old library

This masterclass will explore the photograph as a site of cultural contact in the Arctic—ranging from visualized colonial authority to assertions of Inuit agency. The session will take place in collaboration with the Scott Polar Research Institute’s Picture Library, one of the most comprehensive collections of historic photographs depicting Polar Regions. We will view and discuss a selection of Arctic expedition photographs and other graphic works dating from the 1845 to 1931. This will allow us to engage with photographs in material terms (Edwards 2022).
Our viewing of works from the Picture Library will be illuminated through a wide-ranging body of literature. This reading list includes historical discussions of Arctic exploration, theoretical analyses of the remediation of historical photographs (particularly by Indigenous peoples) as well as the materiality of the photograph. It also includes work by contemporary Inuit artists Asinnajaq and Robert Kautuk, and a discussion of the late Inuk artist Pia Arke’s response to exploration photographs of Greenland. There is a limited number of places for this event. Please email the convenors if you are interested. A reading list will be distributed to all participants in advance, closer to the date.

# Thursday 26th October 2023, 2.00pm - Deb Wood, PhD candidate and Sarah Airriess, research associate, Scott Polar Research Institute, Cambridge University
“Tragedy was not our business”: Individual emotional experience and the Terra Nova Expedition
Venue: Hybrid: Seminar room, SPRI & Zoom - email organiser for details

The narrative of Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition has been repeatedly reworked and mythologised throughout the past century into several starkly different forms. From the ‘tragic heroism’ of the long 19th Century to the cynical revisionism of the 1980s, the story has been shaped to fit into a variety of archetypes. However, these reductions of a multifaceted story into a simple, single-focus narrative often misses the granular emotional experience of the individuals directly involved with this expedition, through which the course of events is best understood. The expedition is, fundamentally, its people. This talk will untangle the layers of culturally-informed legacy building to reveal the nuanced human beings whose personalities, histories, and psychology influenced both the expedition’s events and outcomes, and the publications that committed them to historical record. The zoom link will be sent closer via email closer to the date.

# Thursday 12th October 2023, 2.00pm - Emilie Canova & Liz Walsh, SPRI
Welcome event - Introduction to PHaSS
Venue: In-person - SPRI Friend's room

If you are in Cambridge and interested in the Polar Humanities and Social Sciences early career researchers workshop series, join us in the Friend’s room of SPRI for coffee and cakes to meet other polar ECR and this term’s programme.

# Thursday 15th June 2023, 5.30pm - Bronte Evans, Emilie Canova, Liz Walsh, SPRI
End of term Polar social gathering
Venue: In person - pub Fort St George

Come and enjoy drinks with us at the pub Fort St George!

# Thursday 8th June 2023, 2.00pm - Po-hsi Chen, Post-doctoral fellow, University of Cambridge, Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies
Oceanic Ecotopia, (De) colonizing the South; China’s First Encounter with Antarctica, 1882-1906
Venue: Hybrid: Seminar room, SPRI & Zoom - email organiser for details

As a latecomer in the geopolitical contest, China has joined the race for the Arctic and Antarctica today in terms of military deployment and scientific research. However, this hard-power approach was not the only way to imagine its engagement with the polar regions. Although China is far removed from the South Pole, late imperial publications show that it has been surprisingly up to date about the development of the European exploration of Antarctica since the late nineteenth century. This paper is a preliminary study of China’s earliest cli-fi about Antarctica, Icy Mountain and Snowy Ocean (Bingshan xuehai), published in 1906. Subtitled ‘A Colonial Novel’ (zhimin xiaoshuo), it is set in the apocalyptic future in the year 2399, where global climate change drives southeastern Chinese people to search for a new livable habitat. After sailing for months through the Arctic and Indian Ocean, the Chinese expedition team establishes a socialist ecotopia with people of other races on a remote continent. This study aims to shed light on China’s long-standing but less-known fascination with the continent and its evolving role in shaping its geopolitical, scientific, and environmental policies.

# Thursday 25th May 2023, 2.00pm - Amanda Althoff, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University
Human-insect relations and material culture in Western Alaska
Venue: Zoom - email organiser for details

TBC

# Thursday 11th May 2023, 2.00pm - Alice Oates, PhD candidate, University of Cambridge, Scott Polar Research Institute
People, places, politics and science in the historical geographies of Halley Bay, 1956-present
Venue: Hybrid: Seminar room, SPRI & Zoom - email organiser for details

Alice Oates will talk about her PhD research into the historical geographies of Hally research station, Antarctica, in which she explores Halley as an IGY station, lived space, and part of the history of Antarctic science.

# Friday 17th March 2023, 5.00pm - Bronte Evans, Emilie Canova, Liz Walsh, SPRI
The Arctic and Antarctica in popular novels
Venue: In person - Panton Arms

This is an informal and friendly discussion about novels that are set in the Arctic or Antarctica. Suggested:
- Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
- An African in Greenland by Tété-Michel Kpomassie
- The worst journey in the world the graphic novel adapted by Sarah Airriess from the book by Apsley Cheery-Garrard
You don’t have to read the three of them to attend!

# Thursday 9th March 2023, 2.00pm - Dr Victoria Nuviala Antelo, Faculty of Architecture, Design & Urbanism, University of Buenos Aires, Archive SUR – Archive of Architecture & Habitat in Antarctica
Insulating the wild. Culture-Nature relationship through the lens of Antarctic Architecture
Venue: Zoom - email organiser for details

Anthropology has described Naturalism as a dualistic perception of the world based on the idea of a cultural world produced entirely by human beings and a preexistent natural world inhabited mainly by non-human beings. By the 18th century, this western cosmovision, based on the idea of culture and nature as mutually exclusive, arrived in most territories around the globe, including Antarctica. By the 20th century, this perspective was extended and universally accepted.
Modern architecture permeated by this dualistic perspective worked as a dissemination device of Naturalism globally. The arrival of Modern architecture in Antarctica meant the rise of a specific relationship between humans and nature. Architectural designs, techniques, and materialities suggest how the environment is perceived, ranging from shelter architecture based on the idea of nature as a wild and unpredictable phenomenon to contemporary sustainable architecture built on the notion of nature as a fragile and perishable element. This lecture will explore the spectrum of nature-culture relationships through the analysis of antarctic architecture.

# Thursday 2nd March 2023, 4.00pm - Dr Pauline Pic, École Supérieure d’études internationales (ESEI), University of Laval
Scalar politics and power processes in shared international spaces
Venue: Zoom - email organiser for details

TBC

# Thursday 26th January 2023, 2.00pm - Emilie Canova, SPRI - University of Cambridge
Europe's cartographic 'Arcticulation' of the North: The use of maps in official European and national Arctic policies.
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

TBC

# Thursday 19th January 2023, 3.00pm - Bert de Jonghe, Harvard University and Dr Mia Bennett, University of Washington
Book launch: Inventing Greenland – Designing an Arctic Nation
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Friends' Room

Through the lens of urbanization, Inventing Greenland provides a broad understanding of a unique island undergoing intense transformation while drawing attention to its historical and current challenges and emerging opportunities. Geared towards architects, landscape architects, and urban planners, this book examines the local cultural, social, and environmental realities with a distinct spatial sensitivity, recognizing the diverse array of relationships that the built environment both supports and produces. By exploring Greenland as a complex and interconnected cultural and geographical space, Inventing Greenland reveals and anticipates transitional moments in the region’s highly intertwined urbanized, militarized, and touristic landscapes.
For people present in Cambridge: The panel discussion at the occasion of the book launch will be followed by drinks at the pub the Pantom Arms from 5pm.

# Wednesday 30th November 2022, 7.00pm - Natasha Gardiner, University of Canterbury, New-Zealand
Stakeholder perspectives on knowledge exchange practices at the Antarctic science-policy interface
Venue: Zoom - email organiser for details

Abstract TBC.

# Thursday 17th November 2022, 2.00pm - Maximilien Zahnd, Hauser Post-Doctoral Fellow, NYU School of Law
Rurality, Indigeneity and the Alaska Income Tax, 1949-1980
Venue: Zoom - email organiser for details

Abstract TBC.

# Thursday 10th November 2022, 2.00pm - Bronte Evans, Emilie Canova, Liz Walsh, SPRI
Introduction to PHaSS for new students and members of staff
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Friends' Room

If you are in Cambridge and interested in the Polar Humanities and Social Sciences early career researchers workshop series and would like to know more about it and meet other polar ECR, join us in the Friends’ room of SPRI. Coffee and cakes provided!

# Thursday 13th October 2022, 2.00pm - Sandy Campbell, John W. Scott Health Sciences Library, University of Alberta, Canada
Decolonisation of Arctic library and archive metadata
Venue: Hybrid: Seminar room, SPRI & Zoom - email organiser for details

Please join us for a talk by Sandy Campbell on the decolonization of metadata, descriptive cataloguing, archival description, classification systems, subject headings, and other terminology used by libraries and archives. Sandy has been instrumental in establishing the University of the Arctic’s DALAM thematic network on decolonizing library metadata. This network serves as a community of practice for librarians, archivists and information professionals in the Arctic who work in this area. Sandy’s talk will also outline what decolonisation means in the Canadian context.

SPRI members: Please join us in the Seminar Room from 13:45 for a quick introduction to PHaSS before we start the session.

# Thursday 26th May 2022, 4.00pm - Henrietta Hammant, Anthropology of Heritage PhD candidate, University of Reading; Elias Angele, PhD candidate Department for Contemporary East European History and Culture, University of Bremen
Histories of Antarctica
Venue: Hybrid: Seminar room, SPRI & Zoom - email organiser for details

For the last session of this year’s PHaSS seminar series, we have an exciting joint session with two talks dedicated on Antarctica:

“Heroic Networks: objects, museums and Antarctic explorers” – Henrietta Hammant
Henrietta’s research considers the representation of explorers of the ‘Heroic Age’ of Antarctic exploration (broadly the late 19th to early 20th century) in museum collections. She is particularly interested in how certain figures from this time period, including Sir Ernest Shackleton and Captain Robert Falcon Scott, have come to be thought of as ‘heroes’ thanks, in part, to the work of museum professionals. Expanding the traditional understanding of a ‘hero’, she aims to highlight a diverse network of both human and non-human actors that were critical to these expeditions, and their subsequent memorialisation in museums.

“‘They will not come into contact with the restricted sections of the programme’. The Soviet Union and knowledge exchange in Antarctica” – Elias Angele

# Thursday 19th May 2022, 2.00pm - Dr. Julia Olsen
Arctic coastal communities and increasing shipping activities: local impacts and adaptive responses
Venue: Zoom - email organiser for details

Senior Researcher, Nordland Research Institute

This presentation highlights main findings from my PhD work on how shipping development in the Arctic affects coastal indigenous and non-indigenous communities. Arctic shipping, which comprises all types of vessels operating in the Arctic waters, has historically been covering transportation and supply needs. The recent Arctic shipping growth has been influenced by the interplay of multiple changes in the socio-economic, geopolitical, environmental, and climatic conditions. This increase brings new risks and opportunities to the region and have many cascading impacts on coastal communities. To understand this connection, I applied an analytical framework of adaptation and adaptive capacity. During my talk I will present the impacts of shipping growth, illuminate the aspects of adaptive capacity, and describe local adaptive responses. I will reflect on why and how the same type of impact may receive different interpretations and describe the role of the community agency – the community’s ability to act –for the development of adaptive responses.

# Thursday 12th May 2022, 2.00pm - Dr. Nanna Katrine Lüders Kaalund
A tale of two price-lists: economic topography and colonial governance in the context of the Royal Greenland Trading Company
Venue: Zoom - email organiser for details

Postdoctoral Research Associate, Carlsberg Foundation Fellow School of Culture and Society Aarhus University & Postdoctoral Research Associate, Darwin College University of Cambridge

When the Royal Greenlandic Trading Company (KGH) was founded in 1774, it was granted control over both the monopoly trade and the colonial administration in Greenland. The control over the monopoly trade allowed the KGH to set the purchase price of local products and the value of imported goods from Denmark. The KGH’s colonial administrative power meant that the company directed access to salaried jobs and education. This continued to be the case until 1908, when the Danish parliament passed a law that separated the governance of the trade and colonial administration from each other. The legislative change followed years of debate over the impact of KGH on the living conditions of Kalaallit Inuit. In this paper, I examine what the KGH’s pricelists, called the ‘General-takster’, can reveal about the way the KGH shaped all aspects of life in Greenland. In turn, a comparison between the KGH’s financial records and the General-takster’ illustrates how resource extraction functioned to uphold colonial governance. During the discussion, I hope to engage a conversation on the relationships between geography and economy, settler colonialism, and resource extraction in Greenland.

# Thursday 5th May 2022, 2.00pm - Accessibility In Polar Research (@AccessPolar)
Our experiences: Why Polar Research needs to be accessible
Venue: Zoom - email organiser for details

Navigating the field of polar research is tricky, especially for people with disabilities. Whilst the field has progressed, there are still accommodations that need to be made, and discussions that need to be had regarding inclusivity. Accessibility in Polar Research (APR) was founded during the pandemic by a small group of disabled researchers who have all faced adversities in the field due to their disabilities. In just under two months, we found ourselves with a platform exceeding 700 followers on Twitter (@accesspolar). Each of us are so incredibly grateful to have been given such a space to facilitate the discussion of making the polar field more accommodating. This talk will give you a little taste of what APR has done, what it is aiming to do in the future and why the polar field needs to become more inclusive (using our experiences). We will also leave you with some of our top tips to make your research more accessible and give you the opportunity to ask us some questions.

# Thursday 10th March 2022, 2.00pm - Sam Kramer (William and Mary)
Isolate and Assimilate: Settler Colonialism in the Canadian Arctic (a bipolar perspective)
Venue: Zoom - email organiser for details

Abstract not available

# Thursday 10th February 2022, 2.00pm - Juan Lucci, University of Cambridge
An Assessment of Progress to Decarbonize Antarctic Stations
Venue: Zoom - email organiser for details

Abstract not available

# Thursday 27th January 2022, 2.00pm - Romain Chuffart, University of Durham
Indigenous sovereignty and environmental protection in the Arctic
Venue: Zoom - email organiser for details

Abstract not available

# Thursday 25th November 2021, 2.00pm - Speaker to be confirmed
Short film discussion session: Utuqaq
Venue: Zoom

In the Arctic, ice is both all around and constantly disappearing. “Utuqaq” by Iva Radivojević explores climate change from the perspective of this beautiful and vital element, as four researchers embark on an expedition to drill ice cores in subzero temperatures.

In this session we invite you to discuss your thoughts about this short film as a jumping off point for exploring possible areas of thought such as how ice is perceived by different people, and how researchers interact with spaces that are home to others.

Utuqaq can be watched here: https://fieldofvision.org/utuqaq

# Thursday 11th November 2021, 2.00pm - Fiona Amery, University of Cambridge
What is left unsaid within images of the aurora borealis? The use of linguistic strategies in deciphering the ‘Flaming Letters on the Dark Vault of Night’ in the First International Polar Year (1882-3)
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 28th October 2021, 2.00pm - Stephen Lezak, University of Cambridge (SPRI)
The Arctic at the End of the World: Hannah Arendt and the Narration of Apocalypse
Venue: Zoom

The Arctic is summoned as a harbinger of apocalypse. Too dramatic? Maybe. Then again, headlines crop up with increasing frequency announcing that the entire region is “in a death spiral” or “on the brink” of some more-than-discursive precipice. The implication: as goes the Arctic, so goes the planet.

For fifty years—a relative blink in the lifespan of homo sapiens—the prospect of technologically mediated global apocalypse has haunted public and private imaginaries. What began with nuclear anxieties has shifted into climatic ones. All the while, the intimate politics of anonymous catastrophe remain, blinking through the limelight. The “end of the world” is increasingly studied by geographers as a phenomenon—but we’re playing catch-up.

For this PHaSS session, we’ll bring the Arctic at the end of the world into conversation with the pre-apocalyptic writing of political theorist Hannah Arendt, to venture a little farther into our current moment of dark ecology (Morton, 2010). In particular, we’ll ask how Arendt’s ideas of worldlessness might help us understand how the narration of apocalypse mediates the anxieties of mass society by providing a sense of historicity, purpose, and place. We ask: what if, for those who would otherwise feel lost in the oceanic churn of mass society, the apocalyptic moment is not an experience of being lost, but rather of being found, reoriented to a world that suddenly needs us? To a world that suddenly cares. The Arctic is just the beginning.

Suggested reading ahead of the workshop: https://emergencemagazine.org/essay/meltwater-a-timepiece-for-the-arctic/

# Thursday 21st October 2021, 3.00pm - Jen Rose Smith, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Ice-geographies: Race, Indigeneity, and Coloniality
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 24th June 2021, 2.00pm - Nina Döring (IASS) and Elle Merete Omma (Saami Council)
Improving the relationships between researchers and Indigenous rights holders in the Arctic - What needs to change in funding?
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 3rd June 2021, 2.00pm - Mia Surridge & Alex Partridge (The Polar Museum, Cambridge)
Contentious Collections? Decolonising the Polar Museum
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 27th May 2021, 3.00pm - Marisa Karyl Franz (New York University)
Mariinsky Post as a Meeting Place: Affective Encounters and Ethnographic Records
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 6th May 2021, 2.00pm - Sophie Duveau (Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris)
Science in Practice: Sharing the field with natural scientists
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 11th March 2021, 2.00pm - Marc Jacobsen (SPRI)
Greenland Geopolitics in the light of renewed American attention
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 25th February 2021, 2.00pm - Laura Seddon (University of Durham)
The challenges and opportunities of working across the physical and social sciences
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 11th February 2021, 2.00pm - Daniela Portella Sampaio (City, University of London)
Fishing and conservation in the Southern Ocean: methodological challenges with stakeholders’ interviews
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 28th January 2021, 2.00pm - Eva Crowson and Elise Nyborg (University of Cambridge, SPRI)
Rethinking the Virtual: Towards Digital Decolonisation in the Scott Polar Research Institute
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 3rd December 2020, 2.00pm - Iqra Choudhury (University of Manchester)
SCAR in the 60s: The successes and failures of science diplomacy in Antarctica
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 26th November 2020, 2.00pm - Jean de Pomereu (Associate of SPRI)
Beyond Sublime: Antarctic art since WWII
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 12th November 2020, 4.00pm - Charlotte Schoonman (AWI), Anna Guasco (University of Cambridge), Karla Boxall (SPRI)
Roundtable discussion: Conducting Research in a Pandemic
Venue: Zoom

This will be a roundable discussion on the subject of conducting research during a pandemic. We will hear from a panel consisting of people at different stages in their academic careers.

# Thursday 29th October 2020, 2.00pm - Eleanor Peers (University of Cambridge)
What’s in a model? Shifting multi-species relationships in Sakha (Yakutia)
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 15th October 2020, 2.00pm - Alice Oates (University of Cambridge) and Osnat Katz (University College London)
Finding connections across space, time, and disciplines: Space and Antarctica
Venue: Zoom

Abstract not available

# Thursday 11th June 2020, 2.00pm - Eleanor Peers and Frances Marsh (Polar Library, Scott Polar Research Institute)
[online] Polar humanities research in the Covid-19 pandemic: Where does the SPRI library fit in?
Venue: Zoom

Libraries in Cambridge and indeed across the world have been closed since March. This PHaSS session is envisaged as an opportunity for library staff to learn about humanities researchers’ needs and worries about access to resources as closure continues and explain some of the possibilities and restrictions the library is likely to have in the future. We hope to start a discussion about how the library might best help SPRI’s humanities and social science researchers, continuing Johanne Bruun’s recent presentation on research without access to your ‘field’, to recognise the imperative and developing need for library and archive services. The session is also an opportunity to engage with how these questions of access to information and knowledge are relevant to the case of decolonising the library.

# Thursday 4th June 2020, 3.00pm - Alexis Rider, University of Pennsylvania
[online] On Blue Ice: Antarctic Meteorites and Deepening Planetary Time
Venue: Zoom

During the Antarctic field season of 1969, a group of Japanese glaciologists stumbled on a unique find—nine meteorite fragments, frozen and embedded in a patch of ancient blue ice. After geochemical analysis, the find was revealed to be even more surprising: rather than being pieces of one parent body, the meteorites were a collection of different rocks of varying terrestrial ages. Hearing of the Antarctic meteorites at a Conference four years later, geologist William Cassidy immediately suspected an explanation lay within the ice: slowly spreading from the center of the continent, the Antarctic ice sheet was a “stranding surface” that collected, subsumed, and finally revealed meteorites over a vast timeframe. Since then, the Antarctic Search for Meteorites program (ANSMET)—a joint venture between the NSF, the Smithsonian Institution, and NASA—has scoured patches of blue ice for the rare celestial objects, collecting as many as 6000 unique fragments in one field season.

This paper takes up Antarctic meteorites as natural chronometers, and traces how the space rocks gave glaciologists and meteoriticists a unique temporal tool for understanding the shape and flow of the Antarctic ice sheet. While meteoriticists were predominantly interested in the meteorites themselves—particularly after waning enthusiasm for moon landings—glaciologists focused on the ice in which they were encased: the preserved meteorites confirmed that blue ice was some of the oldest frozen matter on the planet, samples of which could be used to reconstruct past climates. This paper proposes that by treating meteorites and ice as relational timekeepers, rendered legible through similar modes of geochemical analysis, geologists and astrophysicists from the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory repositioned blue ice as a scientific tool, one that could connect the deep time of Antarctic ice to the deeper time of the cosmos.

# Thursday 14th May 2020, 2.00pm - Ragnhild Feng Dale (Western Norway Research Institute)
[online] Elusive Resources and Community Expectations: Petroleum Narratives by the Norwegian Barents Sea
Venue: Zoom

The debate over whether oil found in the Barents Sea should materialise in jobs in the northern regions of Norway has been a hot topic in public debates in recent years, as oil prices have fluctuated and the resource itself is present in smaller amounts than first expected. In this talk, I’ll discuss a paper I’m currently writing, and zoom in on how the dynamic between petroleum companies and local communities in the Norwegian North are performed and communicated in the debate about the Johan Castberg field outside Nordkapp. Here, narratives and expectations of what the resource will mean for them are affected not only by politics or economics, but also by the elusiveness of the resource itself.

# Thursday 30th April 2020, 2.00pm - Johanne Bruun (University of Cambridge)
[online] Researching the field at home: the field and its doubles
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Virtual Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 12th March 2020, 2.00pm - Alice Oates (University of Cambridge)
[Cancelled] ‘No work before breakfast’: Putting people first at Halley Bay research station, Antarctica
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Wednesday 19th February 2020, 11.00am - Morgan Seag (University of Cambridge)
Roundtable discussion on 'Intersectionality and International Polar Research'
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 6th February 2020, 2.00pm - Peter Martin (University of Cambridge)
Roundtable discussion on “Off the beaten track? Critical approaches to exploration studies”
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 30th January 2020, 2.00pm - Frances Marsh and Eleanor Peers (University of Cambridge)
Roundtable discussion on ‘Decolonising the Polar Library: Moving forward’
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 16th January 2020, 2.00pm - Zoia Tarasova (University of Cambridge)
Human Anxieties, Bovine Solutions: Political Subtexts of Native Cattle Conservation in Northeastern Siberia
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 5th December 2019, 2.00pm - Eavan O'Dochartaigh (Umeå University)
Arctic Visible: Picturing Indigenous Communities in the Nineteenth-Century Western Arctic
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 21st November 2019, 2.00pm - Ed Armston-Sheret (Royal Holloway, University of London)
The Selected Body: Investigating Ideas about Nerves and Constitutions in the Heroic Age of Polar Exploration
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 14th November 2019, 2.00pm - Eleanor Peers (University of Cambridge)
From Epic Bards to Pop Stars in North-East Siberia: Song as Patriotic Education
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 7th November 2019, 2.00pm - Othniel Art Oomittuk Jr and Ellis Doeven (Visiting Artists, Alaska)
Introducing Tikigaq - Living with the Whale in the Arctic
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 31st October 2019, 2.00pm - Prem Gill (University of Cambridge)
"Minorities in Polar Research"-Network
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 24th October 2019, 2.00pm - John Woitkowitz (University of Cambridge)
Science Policy Workshop Report/Arctic Circle Assembly 2019
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Tuesday 15th October 2019, 2.00pm - Willy Topkok (Independent Artist, Alaska)
Life in Alaska as an Inupiaq Artist
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 16th August 2019, 11.00am - Aki Tonami (University of Tsukuba)
Japan and its Arctic identity: Forming a narrative about the region
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 20th June 2019, 11.00am - Mia Bennett (University of Hong Kong)
The Sublimity of Sublimating Ice: Ruins of the Anthropocene
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 13th June 2019, 11.00am - Alex Partridge (The Polar Museum)
'Museum Entanglements: acquisitions, engagement and exhibitions at the Polar Museum
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 6th June 2019, 11.00am - Elizabeth Lewis Williams (University of East Anglia)
Antarctic Building and Dwelling: the Poetics of the 'Wide, White Page'
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 23rd May 2019, 11.00am - Elizabeth A. Walsh (Department of Anthropology)
‘They Should Do It Themselves’: Settler Affect and Indigenous Sovereignty on Alaska’s North Slope
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 16th May 2019, 11.00am - Otso Kortekangas (Stockholm University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology)
‘Indigenous’ avant la lettre. The Origin and Livelihoods of the Sámi in European Scholarly Thought 1930-1960
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 9th May 2019, 11.00am - Dina Brode-Roger (KU Leuven) & Sam Saville (Aberysthwyth)
Identity in Change/Svalbard Futures - with an introduction to the Svalbard Social Science Initiative
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 25th April 2019, 2.00pm - Maximilien Zahnd (University of Cambridge)
Can Taxation Help Indigenous Peoples Remap Space?: The Socio-Legal History of the Native Village of Kluti Kaah
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 14th March 2019, 11.00am - Ruth Maclennan (SPRI)
Ivan Chai and King Crabs
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 28th February 2019, 2.00pm - Lill Rastad Bjørst (Aalborg University)
Partnerships in Mining: Stories, Emotions, and the Quest for Stable Relationships in the Greenlandic Mining Sector
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 14th February 2019, 2.00pm - Morgan Seag (University of Cambridge)
Roundtable discussion on "Gender in Polar Research"
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 31st January 2019, 11.00am - Bryan Lintott (University of Cambridge)
Antarctic Heritage and International Relations: Commemorating the Ross Sea Party
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 28th June 2018, 11.00am - Morgan Seag and Bryan Lintott (University of Cambridge)
POLAR2018: Conversations and outcomes
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 14th June 2018, 11.00am - Alex Partridge (The Polar Museum)
The Polar Museum: Museum store tour and discussion
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Museum Store

Abstract not available

# Thursday 7th June 2018, 11.00am - Astrid Nonbo Andersen (Danish Institute for International Studies)
"This isn’t South Africa" – on using the analytical tools of memory studies and transitional justice in Greenland
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 1st June 2018, 11.00am - Stine Alling Jacobsen (University of Oslo)
Cryolite Ghosts - histories of absence from Ivittuut
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 24th May 2018, 11.45am - Peter Martin (University of Oxford)
Supposed-to-be-Land: Indigenous Tales of the Beaufort Sea
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 24th May 2018, 11.00am - Morgan Seag (University of Cambridge)
Equal Opportunities on Ice: Sex discrimination legislation and British Antarctic science
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 11th May 2018, 11.00am - Cameron Mackay (SPRI) and Jamie Sandall (SPRI)
Current MPhil dissertation research
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 3rd May 2018, 11.00am - Vegard Nergård (UIT The Arctic University of Norway)
The plural parent system in Saami reindeer herding families
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Thursday 26th April 2018, 11.00am - Henry Anderson-Elliott (SPRI)
Polar Social Sciences Workshop - Planning Discussion
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 9th February 2018, 11.30am - Anna Stenport (Georgia Institute of Technology) and Scott MacKenzie (Queen's University, Kingston)
The Anxiety of Ice: Visualizing Climate Change and Arctic Moving Images
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 16th June 2017, 11.30am - Bryan Lintott (SPRI)
The Central Intelligence Agency and Antarctica: 1947-59
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 2nd June 2017, 11.30am - Elizabeth Walsh (Social Anthropology, Cambridge)
Cultural institutions and Iñupiat identity in Utqiaġvik
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 26th May 2017, 11.30am - Victoria Herrmann (SPRI)
Making a broader impact with polar research
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 12th May 2017, 11.30am - Alex Partridge (Archaeology, Cambridge)
Census making and “Becoming Peoples”
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 5th May 2017, 11.30am - Henry Anderson-Elliot (SPRI) and Morgan Seag (SPRI)
Architectures and built environments in the Polar Regions
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 28th April 2017, 11.30am - Michael Bravo (SPRI)
Polar Social Sciences Workshop - Welcome Back
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 10th March 2017, 11.30am - Johanna Grabow (Leipzig University and SPRI)
Antarctica in contemporary fiction
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 3rd March 2017, 11.30am - Bryan Lintott (SPRI)
Quantarctica: Polar humanities and social science database
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 24th February 2017, 11.30am - Penny Goodman (SPRI)
Education in Inuit communities in Canada
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 17th February 2017, 11.30am - Matthew Jull (University of Virginia)
Arctic architecture and design
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 10th February 2017, 11.30am - Corine Wood-Donnelly (SPRI)
Roundtable discussion: Current events in the Arctic and Antarctic
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 3rd February 2017, 11.30am - Henry Anderson-Elliott (SPRI)
Conducting fieldwork in the Arctic
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 27th January 2017, 11.30am - Morgan Seag (SPRI)
Arctic and Antarctic research at Cambridge: Polar Social Sciences Workshop planning
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 25th November 2016, 11.30am - Alex Partridge (Archaeology, Cambridge)
Arctic sovereignty and museum collections
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 18th November 2016, 11.30am - Penny Goodman (SPRI)
Interdisciplinary social science and humanities perspectives on climate change in the Arctic
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 11th November 2016, 11.30am - Henry Anderson-Elliott (SPRI)
Reframing the conservation of polar bears in Svalbard
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 28th October 2016, 11.30am - Morgan Seag (SPRI)
Polar Research at Cambridge: Research updates and group synergies
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Wednesday 19th October 2016, 11.30am - Michael Bravo (SPRI)
Interdisciplinary polar social sciences and humanities at Cambridge
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available

# Friday 6th November 2015, 2.30pm - Brendan Plant (Downing College)
Volcanoes and Boundary Issues in International Law
Venue: Scott Polar Research Institute, Seminar Room

Abstract not available