The academic year began with a new happy commitment. I have recently signed a contract for my first academic monograph with Central European University Press (CEU Press).
The book, tentatively titled Living with Stone: Extraction, Environmental Change, and Loss in Northern Russia, will be published in the “Environmental History of Central and Eastern Europe” series. It will develop the main themes of my PhD dissertation, focusing on Indigenous Veps’ connections to decorative stone.
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.
After returning from the industrial heritage congress TICCIH in Kiruna, I am still thinking and writing about company towns. So much is represented and carried through them: the search for a human-built paradise and the struggle against perceived wilderness, hopes and aspirations often followed by regrets and nostalgia. Perhaps I am fascinated by Arctic industrial settlements because they reveal something fundamental about life itself.
