Today I have been comtemplating this question quite a lot and had some very interesting discussions around it. I can say with some certainty and without causing too much uproar, that it can mean very different things to different institutions and individuals. From a surface glance, the tensions (or not) between the three ‘legs’ of… Read More
Category: Geography
18th May – Mountains!
Sunday, a good time for landscape loveliness. Glorious spring weather with stunning scenary that one usually only sees on TV/ postcards. It’s hard to know what to ‘do’ with these kind of views, sometimes it seems like some one just flew in a huge film backdrop and plonked it on the horizon! Stunning Svalbard -views… Read More
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
Putting value theory into action?
Last month I presented a seminar on ‘Putting value theory into action’, in our Aberystwyth departmental seminar series ‘Dialogues in Human Geography’ alongside the imminently interesting Jon Brettell talking about puddles (yes, puddles!). It was a good challenge to finally bring together my thoughts on value and how to relate it to Svalbard. Presenting in… Read More
Sustainable mining in the Arctic?
I might be in danger of sounding like a broken record, but last month I returned from another great conference and am struck again by the importance of getting out there and presenting my research, but for different reasons. This time, I headed to the very North of Norway for the Barent’s Institute’s “Mining the… Read More
Thinking theory
Value is one of the key theoretical concepts my PhD project is based around, given the title ‘Polarising nature-culture: An examination of value in Svalbard’. So, it’s not surprising this slippery little word occupies a lot of my thinking space/ time at the moment. It seems fairly innocent on the surface, we use the word… 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
Nordic Notes
Well we had an amazing little holiday travelling round the West of Iceland: lava fields, volcanic craters, natural springs, waterfalls, seals, a glacier, crazy mossy/ lunar looking landscapes, snow-topped mountains, a Viking… But the reason for being there – the Nordic Geographers Meeting, also far exceeded expectations. I’ve had a really good time there meeting… Read More
samsaville.org 