The North is innovative!

our university r&d department just shared an EU report, where Finland and Sweden lead their EU-internal rating for innovativeness. Nice to see that the North leads the way there! We know that the Arctic is at the forefront when it comes to noticing the changing climate, and people in the North, particularly those who live …

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Arctic climate amplification and Siberia’s burning forests

Usually Arctic amplification is referred to as the reason why the Arctic is warming faster than the earth's average, as the Arctic's surface gets darker (due to less sea ice and snow), and the surface absorbs more heat.What we see currently in Siberia with the burning forests sheds yet another light on how this affects …

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arcticanthropology in top 30! Congratulations to our 10th anniversary!

Dear authors, followers, commenters, readers of our blog. Please allow me to share something on our own behalf: Just got surprising good news that our blog made it to the to rank 30 of the top 42 anthropology blogs worldwide! In their ranking I also noticed that we have been running this blog for 10 …

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Trust Versus Paranoia: Can the Siberian fire spirit explain the spectacular failure of the UK Covid track and trace app?

Piers Vitebsky and Roza Laptander are going to give an interesting example on how to de-provincialise Arctic social sciences. This time on a topic that could hardly be more timely: they refer to their elaborate ethnographies of indigenous Siberians' communications with the fire spirit to explain why apps to track the corona virus may fail. …

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The Arctic Environmental Responsibility Index – oil and gas better than mining?

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/bse.2698 This has been a long journey and a lot of work several years: jointly with a number of interdisciplinary colleagues, we published our article on the ranking of Arctic extractive industries in terms of environmental responsibility. We might think "how is this related to Arctic Anthropology?", but it actually is a lot, both because …

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The Northern Sea Route and waterway infrastructure in the Russian Arctic: a seminar on anthropological perspectives

The European University at Saint Petersburg will host a seminar on the Northern Sea Route at its research Center for Arctic Social Studies. The seminar will be held in Russian and English and is organized in collaboration with Tyumen State University. The seminar will take place in St. Petersburg 23-23 November 2021. Please apply with …

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Prof. Dr. Ulla Johansen passed away

On 14th of February 2021 in her 94th year of life a great person, colleague in Arctic Anthropology and professor emerita of ethnology, Ulla Johansen passed away. Born in Estonia she grew up in a multicultural environment, moved with her parents to Germany, where she studied anthropology after the war in Hamburg. It was her …

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