Anna Niia Varfolomeeva

Category: Collaborations

  • On Changing and Staying the Same

    Since 2021, I have served as the Secretary of Social and Human Working Group at the International Arctic Science Committee. I have just returned from the annual Arctic Science Summit Week, this year held in Aarhus, Denmark, where, for the fifth time, I was responsible for preparing and hosting the Working Group meeting. This is an all-day event: we began the meeting at 8:30 am and finished at 6:30 pm, ten hours in a row!

    When I envisioned this blog post on the evening train to Aarhus, I thought I would write: I remember my first WG meeting as a very new Secretary. It required such an investment of energy, and I was so worried and tired, but this year I managed the same meeting effortlessly…

    It didn’t happen like that. There were once again unpredictable last-minute changes: presentations needed to be transferred, videos displayed, minutes taken, and Zoom links and agendas sent. I was, once again, worried and tired.

    What has changed? I knew I would manage nevertheless, and I was not surprised when the meeting ran smoothly in the end. I still cannot prepare for everything, but I believe in myself more than I did five years ago.

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  • A Citizen Science Exploration

    I am quite late in reflecting on the European Citizen Science Association (ECSA) conference I attended at the beginning of March. But I still have to write this post because:

    • the conference’s welcome ceremony began with ice fishing;
    • it included a pitch by a mermaid;
    • in your free time, you could do some crocheting and think about Deleuze and Guattari at the Rhizome Salon;
    • finally, its closing featured a keynote speech by the former First Lady of Iceland, Eliza Reid, and a children’s address during which I could not hold back tears.
    • anyway, this most probably was…
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  • Unfolding digital futures

    The surface of the LUMI supercomputer looks like origami. This is a tribute to the paper mill on whose premises LUMI and several other data centres are situated. The UPM Kajaani paper mill was a reliable, long-term local employer in this northern Finnish region until it closed in 2008, leaving more than 500 people unemployed.

    Since 2012, the data centre industry has been occupying the former halls and storage areas of the mill. Its spirit is still felt here: in the deserted railway lines that once carried fresh paper out, in the wooden owl installation gifted to the mill by pupils of the local school, and in the old-fashioned chairs of the former factory café that now hosts data centre workers.

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  • A New Collaboration for the New Year

    2026 began with good funding news: our research-art initiative “Tar, Power, Cloud: Strengthening Resilience through Art & Citizen Science” has recently received support from the Frontiers of Arctic and Global Resilience (FRONT) profiling research programme at the University of Oulu.

    In this project, we aim to bridge ethnographic research, artistic practice, and citizen science to explore how industrial and technological development shapes human–landscape relations in the town of Muhos, just outside Oulu. I have long been interested in exploring the potential of research-art collaboration around questions of resource extraction in the Arctic. So, this feels like such an important opportunity – and hopefully (not too late for the New Year resolutions, right?), this is just the beginning.

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  • From Tar to Data: Resource Cycles of the Oulujoki River

    My first publication in Finnish came out in November. This article is one of the outcomes of my Forming Resourcescape project, which was supported by an expenditure grant from the Finnish Cultural Foundation in 2024. The edited volume is titled, in English, Turns and Twists – Cultural Environmental Transformations in the North.

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  • Beyond Words, Loss, and Failure at the YHYS Colloquium

    Last week, Oulu hosted the annual Fall colloquium of the Finnish Society for Environmental Social Science (YHYS). This was my first experience with YHYS, and although I had only just recovered from a rather fierce virus and wasn’t at my best, I was quickly drawn in by the colloquium’s vibrant atmosphere. My main sources of inspiration, however, may sound unusual: nothingness, failure, and the absence of words.

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  • Notes from an Arctic retreat

    Last week, just as the grant submission emotions were finally settling down, I got to experience a bit of tourist Lapland. The project REBOUND, focusing on just green transition in the Finnish North, had a two-day workshop and retreat in a holiday village right at the Arctic Circle.

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  • Feelings of sustainability

    Amidst the heat of the grant application season, it is difficult to keep up with the blog. But very cool things are happening: over the past two weeks, I have taken part in conversations on emotional practices and relations within sustainability transitions at two conferences in opposite parts of Finland.

    First, at the Science for Sustainability conference in the heart of Helsinki, we held a panel devoted to actors often marginalized in energy transition debates in the North: Indigenous residents, migrant workers, animals, and nature. Our five-minute lightning talks were followed by a discussion on just transition and belonging (including some critical remarks on whether justice for all is actually achievable).

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  • Interdisciplinarity beyond buzzwords

    I often call myself an interdisciplinary researcher, but how often do I actually think about what that means? Well, not as often as I’d like to! But last week, I had a chance to reflect on this deeply during three vibrant days as the University of Oulu hosted the 47th Association for Interdisciplinary Studies (AIS) conference.

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  • Reconnecting with Hungary

    As busy May comes to an end, it’s time to recap my recent two-week research visit to the Center for Contemporary Challenges at the University of Pécs in Hungary, hosted by Dr. Judit Farkas. This visit was generously supported by a mobility grant from the Frontiers of Arctic and Global Resilience (FRONT) research program at the University of Oulu.

    I had not been to Hungary since my PhD defense at Central European University, so I saw this visit as an opportunity to reconnect with the Hungarian research environment. The history of higher education in Pécs dates back to 1367, and, as you can see, the main university building looks quite a bit like Hogwarts (and feels like a labyrinth at times, too).

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