The Arctic Environmental Humanities Workshop Series

The Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies and the Scott Polar Research Institute at the University of Cambridge are pleased to host the Arctic Environmental Humanities Workshop Series.

As the Arctic gains greater visibility among academics and diverse publics, we see an urgent need for humanities scholars to help shape the current debates and research priorities too often limited to the natural and social sciences. This rise in awareness of Arctic issues coincides with widespread academic initiatives in the emerging interdisciplinary field of environmental humanities. These growing interests in the Arctic and in the environmental humanities are in turn both catalyzed by the climate crisis; the urgency of this crisis is central to, but not exhaustive of, our collective commitment to Arctic environmental humanities (AEH).

This workshop series is a collaborative enterprise that is robustly interdisciplinary and brings together the diverse expertise of humanistic scholars, scientists, social scientists, and artists for a series of virtual presentations and conversations about Arctic issues.

Convenors

Upcoming Presentations

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Past Presentations

November 19, 2024

Greening the Arctic

“Arctic greening” describes the alarming increase of vegetation around the Northern world, which accelerates global warming and permafrost thaw. But greening in the Arctic also inspires economic, political, and imaginative innovation among local and Indigenous Arctic peoples, who are “experts of change,” as Mininnguaq Kleist (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Greenland) affirmed at the Arctic Circle Assembly of 2023.

“Greening” thus means different things to different people. For social scientists, it is a deliberate introduction of plants into built environments. Ecologists and geographers each observe plants transforming Arctic lands through different lenses, with different results. For Arctic farmers, the increasing ability of plants to grow brings both new opportunities and unpredictability. How do we make sense of these different visions of greening? This panel discussion examined the dramatic expansion of plant life across the Arctic from a variety of viewpoints, considering the sciences and arts, and farms, forests, and tundra together.

Panelists:
Hannah Bradley, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Engineering and Society, University of Virginia
Inuk Silis Høegh, Filmmaker & Visual Artist; Director, The Green Land; Director, Sumé: The Sound of a Revolution
Jeff Kerby, Senior Research Associate, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge; Visiting Fellow, Institute of Arctic Studies, Dartmouth College
Kim Neider, Head Gardener, Upernaviarsuk Experimental Station, Greenland
Ross Virginia, Myers Family Professor of Environmental Science, Dartmouth College; former head of the U.S. State Department Fulbright Arctic Initiative

December 12, 2023

Symposium: “Svalbard: Four Times Faster”

The Arctic is warming four times faster than anywhere else on Earth, as a recent article in Nature confirmed (Rantanen et al, August 2022). The High Arctic archipelago of Svalbard is often invoked as a living laboratory of such accelerated climate change, but Svalbard’s human history has generated social, aesthetic, and political change for centuries. This symposium featured an interdisciplinary conversation exploring the dynamic social, geopolitical, and cultural forces transforming this unique and cosmopolitan place now and into the future. Speakers included the authors and editors of two major new books: Zdenka Sokolíčková, author of The Paradox of Svalbard: Climate Change and Globalisation in the Arctic (2023), and Mathias Albert, Dina Brode-Roger, and Lisbeth Iverson, editors of Svalbard Imaginaries: The Making of an Arctic Archipelago (2023).

Panelists:
Mathias Albert, University of Bielefeld, Germany
Dina Brode-Roger, KU Leuven, Belgium
Lisbeth Iverson, The Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway
Zdenka Sokolíčková, Arctic Centre, University of Groningen, The Netherlands

November 28, 2022

“Climate Repair and Governance: Science and Ethics”

Panelists:
Erin Dockins, PhD Candidate, The Glacier Lab at the University of Oregon
Sonja Klinsky, Associate Professor, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
Stefanie Mack, Scientific Programme Manager, The Centre for Climate Repair at the University of Cambridge
Maria Antonieta “Antoinette” Nestor, Engagement Manager, The Centre for Climate Repair at the University of Cambridge
Henrik Selin, Associate Dean for Studies & Associate Professor of International Relations, Pardee School of Global Studies, Boston University

April 5, 2022

“Icy Humanities: A Collaborative Symposium”

Session I: Icy Humanities
Prof. Mia Bennett, Geography, University of Washington
Prof. Mark Carey, History & Environmental Studies, University of Oregon; Director, Environmental Studies Program
Siobhan Mcdonald, Artist
Zachary Provant, PhD student, Environmental Studies, University of Oregon

Session II: Glaciology and Society
Rebecca Dell, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge
Prof. Sérgio H. Faria, Ikerbasque Research Professor, Basque Centre for Climate Change (BC3)
Prof. Mark Jackson, Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol
Sarah Tingey, PhD student, Geographical Sciences, University of Bristol

November 16, 2021

“Curating the Arctic: Northern Museums and Decolonization”
Sven Haakanson
Genevieve LeMoine

October 12, 2021

“What Can We Learn from Ignorance? Arctic Energy Frontiers, Environmental Regimes, and Indigenous Rights Movements Since the 1970s”
Prof. Andrew Stuhl

Contact us for the video recording

May 10, 2021

“Cloudberries and Icebreakers: Filming Real and Imagined Journeys in the Russian Arctic”
Ruth Maclennan

March 30, 2021

“Daughters of the Snow”: BBC Radio 4 program featuring Michael Bravo and Adriana Craciun

Listen here

March 2, 2021

“Mediated Arctic: The Poetics and Politics of Contemporary Arctic Geographies”
Johannes Riquet, Liisa-Rávná Finbog, Markku Salmela, and Anna Westerstahl Stenport
The Mediated Arctic Geographies Project (Tampere University, Finland)

January 28, 2021

“Ataramik (Always): A Conversation with Reneltta Arluk”
Reneltta Arluk (Inuvialuit, Dene, Cree)
Director of Indigenous Arts at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity
Director, Akpik Theatre

December 17, 2020

“Sumé: The Sound of a Revolution and Greenland Today”
Inuk Silis Høegh
Director of Sumé: The Sound of a Revolution

October 13, 2020

“Arctic Energy Before Petroleum: Or, What Whales Can Tell Us About Writing History”
Bathsheba Demuth
Assistant Professor of History & Environment and Society, Brown University
***Read Chapter 4 (“The Waking Ice”) of Demuth’s 2019 book, Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait: DOWNLOAD HERE

September 29, 2020

“Why We Should Develop Arctic Humanities”
Sverker Sörlin
Professor of Environmental History, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory

September 1, 2020

“The Shaggy Saviour of Northern Norway”
Dolly Jørgensen
Professor of History, University of Stavanger, Norway
Co-editor of Environmental Humanities, 2020-22