Weather warning issued with dramatic looking wind map! More of a snow-storm day really. The forecast storm has not dissappointed. All tours are off today. The building has a rattle every now and then. In the spirit of a snow day though, I did venture out for a very quick walk to see what it… Read More
Category: Field Work
Cloud partings and beach art
Today’s forecast was good and the clouds lifted, revealing just how light it gets around midday now. So, given it looks to be a pretty stormy day tomorrow I thought I would make the most of the still conditions, don some ski trousers, get toasty and go for a proper round-town trek. One of… Read More
Back in the field
Oslo airport, first thing I saw through departures! Well, when I left last summer, I wrote that I didn’t know if I would be coming back to Svalbard, I really didn’t. It seems that the conviction and numbers of people that told me to come back in winter/spring, combined with some diligent budgeting (and understanding… Read More
Multi-modal meanings, multi-media methods
This week I took part in a two day interdisciplinary, multi-modal research workshop, organised by the ESRC Wales DTC in Cardiff. The aim of the day was to explore the different modes we make meaning and observe with, the affordances of four key media with which we can record ethnographic observations, and the relationship between… Read More
Trip stats
Back to Aberystwyth just in time to see the sunset! Being a largely qualitative researcher, it’s not that often you’ll see that many figures in my work. Sometimes putting a number on things is interesting and can give a good overall picture though, so here are a few random things that you might be interested… Read More
Post field work re-balancing act
Time has flown by since I returned from Svalbard, it’s been 2 months already! It has been an interesting and slightly chaotic time. I hadn’t really thought about what it would be like having ‘done’ my fieldwork, except that it meant I ought to get on with analysis and writing and could for a while… Read More
An Interview with myself
Research back at ya! As a parting gesture and small payback for all the help people in Svalbard have given me with my research, I thought it might be fun/interesting/fair to subject myself to the same questions I have been asking. As with all the interviews I have undertaken, I start with the general questions… Read More
4th July – Putting a price on it
One of the things we tend to think about when the word ‘value’ comes up is economic value, how much can we get for our money. In Svalbard the answer is usually a lot less than you might hope for and after a while you have to stop being shocked and grumbling because it gets… Read More
29th June- 2nd July: Times of change in Barentsburg
I’ve been following the dicussions in the local paper on the changes to the built environment in Barentsburg over the last few months. Having seen the stark contrasts between old and new last year, I could see where these debates were coming from and where the concerns and different view points on cultural heritage value,… Read More
25th June – Waste not want not
Scrap metal lined up for shipping in Pyramiden I have been thinking about ‘waste’ and its value quite a lot while in Svalbard. Pyramiden one might think is an extreme example. However, though teaming with things that are no longer in use for their original purpose, there is a significant amount that is not in… Read More
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