26 March 2025 | 13:30 - 18:00 (MDT)
Open Session - HYBRID
Room: UMC Second Floor - 247
Organisers: Alexandra Meyer (University of Vienna); Peter Schweitzer (University of Vienna); Olga Povoroznyuk (University of Vienna); Vera Kuklina (George Washington University)
Session Description:
This interdisciplinary session delves into the unique challenges and future possibilities of Arctic infrastructure, encompassing perspectives from the social sciences, engineering, natural sciences, and the arts. The Arctic's extreme climate, permafrost, and remoteness impose significant obstacles on infrastructure development. Despite many ambitious plans for Arctic development, the realization of projects is often hindered by limited community engagement and logistical challenges. From a societal perspective, different stakeholders can see infrastructural development either as a blessing or as a curse, depending on the type of entanglement with a particular infrastructure and the opportunity to participate in governance processes.
The session will explore what distinguishes Arctic infrastructures from those in other regions, focusing on the interplay between the harsh physical environment of the Arctic and socio-economic factors. Building on the efforts of the IASC Research Initiative RATIC, this discussion aims to foster innovative approaches and actionable insights for identifying the challenges of Arctic infrastructure development. We invite papers that address socio-economic, environmental, technological, and artistic aspects of Arctic infrastructure, emphasizing the need for collaborative processes such as co-imagining, co-creating, and co-planning to envision sustainable infrastructural futures