Ria-Maria Adams

Meyer, A., Adams, R.-M., & Elixhauser, S. (2026). “Lifelines and Gateways: The Relational Affordances of Arctic Airports.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 55(1), 37-62. https://doi.org/10.1177/08912416251398478 (Original work published 2026)

Tasiilaq, East Greenland. Photo by Sophie Elixhauser.

Svalbard Airport, Longyearbyen. Photo by Alexandra Meyer.

Rovaniemi Airport runway. Photo by Ria-Maria Adams.

✈️ Airports are vital to #Arctic life, yet often shaped by geopolitical and economic interests.

An ethnographic comparison of Longyearbyen, Rovaniemi & Tasiilaq by Meyer, Adams & Elixhauser is now #openaccess in the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography. #InfraNorth

🔗 infranorth.eu/news/dec-202...

New Blogpost on Arctic mobility and disruptions 🔧⚙️🧰

🛫 Arctic Airports as Lifelines and Gateways? Shaped by geopolitical agendas and external economic interests, Arctic airports are essential lifelines for communities across remote regions.Our @infranortherc.bsky.social article explores these relational affordances journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...

So happy to see our recent visit to #Vardø featured in @cryopolitics.com fresh-from-the-press blog post! 📡🦀🎣

Santa at war: ‘home’ town in Finland hosts Nato soldiers as Russian threat looms Christmas tourists are noticing a growing military presence in Lapland, where Santa Park doubles as a bomb shelter

Interesting article on the co-existence of tourism and military in Finnish Lapland 🎅🏼🪖

www.theguardian.com/world/2025/d...

‘Look what you’ve done to my children!’: a tale of winter wonderland disasters These events are meant to make Christmas magical, and while many do, a few fall spectacularly short. Here, in no particular order, are some of the worst offenders

🎅🏼🥶Nice article on winter wonderland disasters - perhaps reason enough for some to look at Arctic destinations to have a different kind of experience

www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle...

No room in the North: housing scarcity as infrastructure’s failed relations in the Arctic This article examines the entanglements of housing infrastructure, economic structures, and social relations in Arctic regions, focusing on Nunavut (Canada) and Malmfälten (Sweden). Using a compara...

🗞️Within @infranortherc.bsky.social, Katrin Schmid and I examine very different #Arctic communities to show how capitalist logics drive #housing scarcity — and how “infrastructure’s failed relations” become visible in diverse local contexts.
🏚️🏗️ www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Oct 2025: Book by Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds, Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic - InfraNorth A new book examining the rapid climate and geopolitical shifts in the Arctic, Unfrozen: The Fight for the Future of the Arctic, by Mia Bennett and Klaus Dodds, has been recently published by Yale Univ...

📚 We highly recommend 𝗨𝗻𝗳𝗿𝗼𝘇𝗲𝗻: 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗙𝘂𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰, by Mia Bennett (Univ. Washington; InfraNorth associate researcher) & Klaus Dodds (Royal Holloway) — an insightful look at the rapid climate and geopolitical shifts shaping the #Arctic.

@cryopolitics.com @klausdodds.bsky.social

Jan 2026: InfraNorth Contributions to Forthcoming Book “Arctic Silk Roads” - InfraNorth InfraNorth researchers contribute two chapters to the forthcoming book Arctic Silk Roads: An Anthropology of the Unbuilt, edited by Natalia Magnani and Matthew Magnani. The volume will be published by...

📚 #InfraNorth researchers contribute two chapters to 𝗔𝗿𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗰 𝗦𝗶𝗹𝗸 𝗥𝗼𝗮𝗱𝘀: 𝗔𝗻 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗻𝗯𝘂𝗶𝗹𝘁 (Berghahn Books, eds. N. & M. Magnani, Jan 2026).

🚢 The forthcoming book traces how melting sea ice fuels global imaginaries of #Arctic routes and #infrastructure visions shaping local agency.

Bildeserie: Bli med inn i gamle Kiruna Kiruna (High North News): I en historisk prosess flyttes Kiruna i Nord-Sverige for å gi plass til gruvedrift under byen, som har ført til at bakken synker og danner sprekker. Noe som igjen utgjør en f...

Bildeserie: I en historisk prosess flyttes Kiruna i Nord-Sverige for å gi plass til gruvedrift under byen, som har ført til at bakken synker og danner sprekker. Bli med High North News inn i den gamle og nå forlatte gruvebyen.

#Kiruna #LKAB #Arktis #Nordområdene

🌾 Last week’s #Edgenet workshop at @umeauniversitet.bsky.social spotlighted the #periphery 🫶🏼 Discussing industrial booms & busts, the (lack of) infrastructure, and the role of mining in shaping remote regions. Inspired by this amazing group‘s take on local #initiatives ✨ @infranortherc.bsky.social

💡Also learned at the #Edgenet workshop: battery production involves 120 precise steps - every single one must function for success. With cheaper #electricity than southern #Sweden and nearby raw materials, #Västerbotten is well-positioned for large-scale industry and investments.

🔋Visited #Northvolt’s huge 5,000-employee site during the #Edgenet seminar in #Skellefteå. Once Europe’s best hope to rival Chinese #battery giants, the company filed for bankruptcy in March 2025 - one of Sweden’s largest corporate collapses. @infranortherc.bsky.social @umeauniversitet.bsky.social

📯 Interested in #tourism #imaginaries across the poles? Our new paper with Jolynna #Sinanan and @philbu.bsky.social compares Everest, Churchill, and Rovaniemi - discussing how these places are imagined and experienced. 🏔️🐻‍❄️🌌

🔗 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

In our #infrastructure panel,we discussed from German museums to Chinese NGOs to #Arctic airports - how comparison isn’t about ranking or simplifying but rather about opening up understanding, challenging assumptions, and making differences analytically visible🔍🌍 #FAC2025 @infranortherc.bsky.social

✍🏻 In the #Westermarck Lecture, Tom #Boellstorff reminded us that the task of comparison is “not restricted to that of classifying the different phenomena of culture. Its ultimate object is to answer to the question: ‘why‘”
Our goal as #anthropologists should be to understand how people think 🌀💡

💎Soumhya Venkatesan’s keynote was a powerful reminder: comparison doesn’t have to be good to be productive.💡Her example on contrasting views of #freedom showed just how profoundly differently people can understand the same concept. It’s through comparison that these diverse meanings come into view.

🌀Two days into the Finnish #Anthropology Conference. Been diving into different takes on #comparison and how colleagues use it in their work.Still untangling how to make it work best in our @infranortherc.bsky.social research, but there are still a few sessions left to spark ideas ✨ #FAC2025 #UHel

Jun 17, 2025: Panel and Presentation by Ria-Maria Adams at the Finnish Anthropological Society Conference 2025 - InfraNorth InfraNorth researcher Ria-Maria Adams will be convening a panel and presenting a paper at the 2025 Biennial Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society in Helsinki. This year’s conference, which...

📅 Next week, on June 17, #InfraNorth researcher Ria-Maria Adams will present a paper and chair the session “Rethinking #Infrastructure through Comparative Lenses: Climate, Environment, and Cultures in Transformation” at the #Finnish #Anthropological Society Conference 2025! @riaadams.bsky.social

Our new blogpost on Arctic housing is out 🏠🏘️👷🏽🧱🏗️

infranorth.eu/blog/plenty-...

@infranortherc.bsky.social

While road #infrastructure is important for #remote towns, air connectivity is vital for #Arctic communities like #Vardø. #Widerøe’s small planes operate on ‘milk run’ routes—making short, essential stops at multiple towns. Four of us got off last week from a full flight. @infranortherc.bsky.social

Impressed by the amount of street art in #Vardø — highlighting the importance of local fishing and expressing concern about how big corporations threaten the livelihoods of local fishers who have relied on the sea for generations 🎣🦀

On a tiny Norwegian island, America keeps an eye on Russia - ArcticToday VARDO, Norway — The population of the Arctic island of Vardo has shrunk to half of what it was 20 years ago, and the fishing industry that sustained its residents for generations has mostly collapsed....

📡🐠 This 2017 @arctictoday.bsky.social article by Andrew Higgins from #Vardø still is relevant today. Residents seem more concerned about shuttered fish factories, dwindling fish stocks, and disappearing whales than about American satellites on their remote island.
www.arctictoday.com/on-a-tiny-no...

Finnair with record number of flights above the Arctic Circle next winter Rovaniemi, Kittilä, Ivalo, Kirkenes, Alta, Tromsø and Bodø are all destinations inside the Arctic Circle for the Finnish flag carrier the coming winter. The airport next to Santa Claus Village in Lapl...

Rovaniemi, Kittilä, Ivalo, Kirkenes, Alta, Tromsø and Bodø are all destinations inside the Arctic Circle for the Finnish flag carrier the coming winter. The airport next to Santa Claus Village in Lapland gets as many as 72 weekly flights.

Tapasin kemijärveläisnuoria, ja yllätyin – nuorten mielestä kotikaupungista ei puutu mitään muuta kuin opiskelupaikka Tapasin kemijärveläisnuoria, ja yllätyin. Nuorten mielestä kotikaupungista ei puutu mitään muuta kuin opiskelupaikka.

🗞️Great column by Anna Ruohalainen in #LapinKansa on shifting #youth perceptions of their #rural hometowns - after years of pessimistic views dominating the discourse, a more hopeful view is emerging. Honoured to see results of my dissertation mentioned too 🫶🏼
www.lapinkansa.fi/tapasin-kemi...

🍿🎬📽️ Ethnographic documentary film festival @ethnocineca.bsky.social starting tomorrow in #Vienna. Great program:

www.ethnocineca.at/en/home/

▶️ Don’t miss this video interview with Peter Schweitzer, principal investigator of #InfraNorth, as he reflects on his journey of anthropological research with Arctic communities, focusing on issues related to the built environment, mobility, remoteness, and the social impacts of climate change 👇

🙌🏼Yesterday was so special - first, teaching a class together with amazing 💫 @gretegans.bsky.social, followed by an invited talk about our @infranortherc.bsky.social research results on #Arctic tourism #infrastructures at the department brown bag session at the #UniversityofWyoming 🏫

Had a great weekend with @gretegans.bsky.social exploring rural #Wyoming and driving through Niobrara County 🇺🇸🐎The vast open spaces, small villages, the harsh weather, endless cargo trains, and oil fields reminded me of many of the issues we face in the #Arctic too. @infranortherc.bsky.social

💫 🇺🇸Two memorable days of getting to know the #rural areas of #Wyoming with @gretegans.bsky.social