New research investigates how value is measured and created in Svalbard.
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 Web 2.0! If you are reading from Svalbard, feel free to pass this on widely! I wrote it really to explain what I am going to be up to during the next couple of months of field work in Svalbard, so before it gets old hat, here it is. Bi-lingually (tusen takk Gro-Mette!) What’s Svalbard worth?
New research investigates how value is measured and created in Svalbard.
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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 front of colleagues and friends always seems more nerve-wracking than a room of strangers too, so I'm glad I made it out of the other side unscathed! Read on if you want to hear what I said... :) 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 a lot in everyday language: ‘there’s a lot of value in what you are doing there…that’s really good value for money…I value your honesty …’ etc. 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 having a greater appreciation for the book itself. So here goes. Despite the old adage, ‘never judge a book by its cover’... At the start of the year seems a good time for reflection (plus a few links back to previous posts!). For the past few months it has been dawning on me how much life has changed since starting the PhD 15 months ago. Back then, I was struggling to retain a semblance of ‘normality’ despite transitioning from part-time work to full-time study. Learning languages and how to shoot a rifle were distant prospects of excitement/dread. Now they have become part of my weekly routine, and sadly the garden and sewing projects that used to slot in nicely in the old part-time life, are left 95% neglected. Now that I’ve been to Svalbard once and am planning my next trip for this year, learning Russian, Norwegian and shooting seems far from abstract, but genuinely useful skills to help my research along.
Oops it has been a bit quiet on the blog lately. I've been trying to knuckle down and get some serious writing done, something I find difficult at the best of times. At the start of the month though I found the perfect excuse to get away from the office whilst working on my academic skills with the added bonus of meeting up with other geographers. 1-3rd November I went along to the Social and Cultural Geography Research Group's weekend away: Reading and Writing Social and Cultural Geography.
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 a group of 35 Swedish and U.S students and leaders as a stranger, to join them in their field camp in a relatively remote location in Svalbard; well, it was a leap of faith from both sides…
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 mobiles parked up, you could almost forget you are in the Arctic and at the northern most nearly everything! Longyearbyen is a
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 new people, gathering ideas and generally absorbing lots of key insights on the conference theme – Geographies of Responsibilities. I’ll try and summarise the highlights in this post...
After what seems like a very, very long wait this year, summer has finally arrived in Mid-Wales, and it’s stunningly beautiful. You can kind of hear, smell, sense and see the relief and joy the sun and warmth brings. And we’re leaving. It feels exceptionally ‘wrong’! I’ve been planning this first set of Arctic trips for months, immersing myself in films, images, novels and academic papers about cold places for even longer. Desperately trying to imagine myself there surviving the cold and doing research. And yet the body’s call to stay at home, re-living happy summer times: soaking up the sun, running in the hills, playing in the sea, growing fresh goodies, is extremely strong. We battled hard against this as we packed up all our gathered wet and cold weather gear and set out into the sunshine. These past few months I’ve also been working with people who have already been to Svalbard, who have been sharing their memories and experiences with me and each other. They have been incredibly interesting discussions: a heady cocktail of useful practical advice, exciting stories of Arctic adventures and fond memories of the places, people and feelings that talking, thinking and drawing (!) about Svalbard invoked. It is these memories I have been paying particular attention to. This is one avenue of looking at how ‘Svalbard’ as a place, is reproduced across space and time. These discussions allowed me to try out some research methods which I hope facilitated a fun and easy way to reminisce and share impressions and encounters with the spaces of Svalbard. The two small groups of participants were invited to bring souvenirs, photos and any other items to the meetings to help spark discussions and recollections about the time(s) they spent there. We also did some sketching as a way to portray differences and similarities in public and personal impressions of Svalbard. In Iceland, I’ll be presenting some of my initial findings and reflections on this methodology in the ‘Emotions, Space and Memory: in search of methodological openings’ session at the Nordic Geographer’s Meeting. So, despite journeying back to autumn/winter temperatures, I’m looking forward to what promises to be an inspiring and interesting conference, and exploring a bit of Iceland of course.
Last month has been a busy one: I presented an introduction to my PhD project to fellow human geographers amidst the beautiful grounds of Gregynog. The director of the ESRC Wales DTC came along too, they have a little piece on the conference here. I've just gotten back from the Royal Geographic Society's Postgraduate Mid-Term conference, hosted by Birmingham University, which was a great experience, hearing about so many interesting research plans and findings and meeting even more geography PhDers. You can find out a bit more about what went on there from the Tweets on the home page and the #rgsmidterm hashtag. Both of these conferences were really supportive for sharing ideas on a non-threatening platform and encouraging us newbies on the scene, so anyone out there in a similar position, I'd encourage you to go to similar events, the midterm runs every year. I thought it might be nice to let people outside the conferences in on what I presented as well, given that it seems (if it works that is) pretty easy to share these things, so here it is! This is around 20 minutes long - each time you move/zoom to a new bit an audio clip should start playing (there are a few slides without audio though). All feedback welcome on any aspect! Enjoy!
Prezi Presentation: Polarising Nature-culture: Values in Svalbard So, polar bears. They have been fascinating to me from the point where they started being flag ship species and campaign motives for action on climate change (which I’ll come to shortly). However, since starting this project, they have started to haunt my dreams (nightmares) in a rather different sense, given getting eaten by one is a possibility when I head out to Svalbard! Don’t worry, I’ll be taking all the necessary pre-cautions to minimise the risks, but I think it’s good to have a healthy respect for these arctic residents, and watching this series has been useful in cultivating this.
With there being some snow around (although not much in Aberystwyth), along with a flurry (sorry!) of documentaries popping up featuring one hell of a lot of ice, I thought I’d start a little series of posts about the ones I’ve been watching. First up: Chasing Ice If you haven’t heard about this one, it’s a documentary about the Extreme Ice Survey, a time-lapse photography project led by James Balog. About 30 cameras were installed (no mean feat!) to take time lapses of glaciers in the Arctic. That climate change is happening, is not something I need much convincing of. One can easily point to the many many variables this visual imagery cannot take into account (despite media headlines of course of ‘irrefutable truths’ etc). Nonetheless the retreat of the glaciers these cameras record, over just a few years, is quite staggering. Yes, this was over a short time period, but for me, watching such massive chunks of ice calving off into the sea and thinking about the long term trends and predictions at the same time, made for some scary and quite emotional viewing. Which, I presume is the main point of the project: giving people something real and happening to visualise when scientists talk of sea level rise, melting ice caps. Just before attending this event [1] I remember questioning why I was going. Sure it sounded interesting, but I had umpteen assignments, marking, supervisions, all sorts that were looming, should I really be going to a conference that I’m not presenting at? Well, I’m really glad I did, it was an inspiring day full of interesting people and perspectives, lively cross-disciplinary discussions and I have to say I learnt a lot about what I need to learn more about! I won’t mention all the speakers, but here is a round up of the discussions and questions that sparked particular interest for me.
Thinking about temporality The centre’s director, Graham Dawson got the day off to a good start by getting my brain ticking over the ways in which understandings of the past can be useful, not just interesting. Apparently this quote’s famous, but it was a first hearing for me: ‘The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there’ L. P Hartley: The Go Between (1953) – into which he interjected that the same could be said of the future. But how to do we ‘go’ to the past or future? These are key ponderances for me as I am thinking through the different temporalities my proposed case study sites invoke. Indeed climate change as an entity has time woven into it in every strand. |
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