We walked out to the easterly town limits this evening. Mainly because I wanted to say ‘hei’ to the cute husky dogs along the way. As we arrived at the infamous polar bear sign however, two gentlemen came along and we watched as they appeared to be having great fun climbing the thing. Assuming they… Read More
Category: Field Work
Read all about it!
So, I’ve written a press release, about myself, which is a weird thing to do (but for fellow researchers, it was a fun exercise in writing differently and explaining in plain language). It seems so far no one has gotten round to publishing it, so I might as well do it myself, the glories of… Read More
Svalbard, jeg er her igjen!
I’m back in Svalbard (with slightly more Norwegian under my belt) for the next two months for the main fieldwork of the PhD. Most of my time is likely to be spent chasing people around for interviews and discussions, doing said interviews, transcribing them, thinking about them and generally observing the goings on here (more… Read More
Persistent Memories of Pyramiden: book and field review
Right at the beginning of this blog I mentioned reviewing the book Persistent Memories: Pyramiden – a Soviet mining town in the High Arctic, by Hein Bjerk, Bjornar Olsen and Elin Andreassen, (2010). Now I have visited Pyramiden myself, I feel in a stronger position to say something about its subject matter as well as… Read More
Summer Svalbard Part 2: Petunia Bay Camp
From 2 -9th July I joined the KTH (Stockholm Royal Institute of Technology)/ Illinois University field course: Environment and Society in a changing Arctic on their trip to Petunia Bay (we named our camp ‘Avangostad’ in honor of the course leader/ benevolent dictator, Dag Avango). What an incredible and magical week this was! Coming into… Read More
Summer Svalbard Part 1: Longyearbyen
Well, I have been here in Svalbard for just over a week now (though I didn’t manage to post this at the time of writing). It’s hard to know where to start in terms of describing it. Were it not for the stunning back drop of snow laced peaks and glacier, and hundreds of snow… Read More
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