Snow is a key variable of climate change, making it and its associated impacts clearly visible. The changes in snow cover over the last 150 years or so are well documented for the Alps from measurements. However, the situation in Greenland is completely different. Although snow also plays a central role for the population there, hardly any measurements are available for this huge island. 

This research gap motivates the overall research goal of Snow2School, namely to be able to better quantify changes in snow conditions using the example of Uummannaq (Greenland), by means of a new reconstruction method based on photographs, which is being developed and tested for Eisenerz (Austria, Alps).  At the same time, Snow2School aims to generate a better understanding of the impact of snow changes (against the background of climate change) on the lives of people in Greenland and Austria. Snow2School thus pursues an interdisciplinary research approach with strong Citizen Science support.

Education is a powerful tool for building inclusive and pluralistic democratic societies. Democratic principles, including i.a. gender and racial equality, freedom of speech and religion, equality and acceptance of different sexual orientations do not come naturally. They need to be taught. Further, different scholars have demonstrated how experiences of discrimination and exclusion negatively affect students’ performance at school, if not their motivation to attend school in the first place. Considering these challenges in European Societies the project’s general aim is to enhance the quality of teaching to support the creation of inclusive schools that will provide young people with the necessary skills to participate in the democratic life and global knowledge. The idea of DIGITclue is to provide teachers with the skills, knowledge and tools to deploy ICT-based interactive and e-learning technologies for inclusive teaching.
The project will link the latest research findings on inclusive pedagogies, ICT-based learning tools and transcultural education to develop software applications for teacher education. One core and innovative aspect of the project consists in ensuring the inclusion of teachers with special needs, multilingual teachers or hard-to-reach teachers who work in remote and marginalized areas, in every step of the development and delivery of educational material.

complete project description

The “new Arctic” is attracting global attention for a variety of reasons, including geopolitics, militarisation, resource extraction, wilderness tourism, and calls for environmental protection in the face of rapid climate change. Many of these activities necessitate the construction or upgrading of transport infrastructures in this relatively remote, inaccessible and scarcely-populated part of the world. While these large-scale infrastructures are mostly sponsored by outside interests, they can have profound impacts on local residents.

We propose to focus on how residents of the Arctic, both indigenous and non-indigenous, engage with these infrastructures, and to examine the intended and unintended consequences these projects have on their lives. 

Our challenge is to understand whether existing and planned transport infrastructures will support permanent human habitation and sustainable communities in the Arctic, or whether they will strengthen a trend of substituting permanent residents with “temporaries” like shift workers, tourists and military personnel. In addressing this challenge, we adopt a relational affordance perspective, which will document the material and non-material entanglements of local residents and transport infrastructures in three distinct arctic regions (Russian Arctic, North American Arctic, European Arctic). 

Our approach combines ethnographic fieldwork with mapping exercises and archival research. Our project team of anthropologists and geographers will use quantitative population data to upscale to the regional level, and regional patterns will be contrasted and compared to reach conclusions on the panarctic level. 

We will use interactive scenarios to collect input and to develop decision options. Our overarching research question – What is the role of transport infrastructures in sustaining arctic communities? – is of urgent relevance on both theoretical and practical levels, and by addressing it we will contribute locally informed results to critical conversations about arctic futures.

The Europe-Asia Research on Forced Migration is a collaboration between the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (Institute for Human Sciences, IWM) and Mahanirban Calcutta Research Group (MCRG). The first research project "Annual Research and Orientation Programme in Migration and Forced Migration Studies with Particular Focus on South Asia and its European-Asian Dimension" (2019 until 2021) focuses on establishing the collaboration and cooperation between European and Asian institutions and academics. It was established to foster working toward innovative knowledge production on forced migration and bordering regimes. Series of activities and workshops aim to enhance research capacities and facilitate the exchange of knowledge and policy expertise in forced migration studies in and between Europe and Asia. Bringing together scholars, policy makers and practitioners from different disciplines and regions, the platform aspires to decentering scholarship, debates, and policies on forced migration. The project continues through "Justice, Protection and Government of the People. A Two-Year Research and Orientation Programme on Protection and Democracy in a Post-COVID World" grant until Summer 2023.

The Europe-Asia Research hosts Seminar Series on Forced Migration at the University of Vienna. The events bring speakers from a range of disciplines and scholarship interests to discuss multiple geographical and temporal dimensions of migration. Topics ranging from changing regimes and forms of governance of migrants/refugees; the solidarity networks and demands for social justice entangled with increasing inequalities, austerity politics, and racism; the institutional components regulating and managing different forms of displacement; incorporation and exclusion of refugees and migrants from labor markets and protection regimes along the lines of gender, race, religion, and work among others. The Seminar Series aims to expand current knowledge on the specificities of policies and debates on refugees and migrants in the context of forced migration and bordering regimes.

By contrast to their rather transitory relations with colleagues at other German universities, Viennese ethnologists’ interactions with their Frankfurt counterparts were quite dense. They encompassed various academics of both cities at different stages between the time after World War I until the late 1940s. On closer inspection, it seems that a shared approach may be one main reason for this. Whereas other ethnologists represented functionalist, psychological or other approaches, which usually were oriented towards the present, in Vienna and in Frankfurt they mainly took a cultural-historical stand. Some of their basic assumptions could differ, however, such as theological or racist premises. The cultural-historical concept often was based on the examination of “culture circles” or “culture-areas” with centres of dissemination (i.e. diffusion)- This was one of the significant directions of Völkerkunde in Austria and Germany and influenced other disciplines such as folklore, archaeology, prehistory or art history.

In particular, the aim of this project is to clarify the importance inherent to very different cultural historical approaches for various contacts between ethnologists from Vienna and Frankfurt during three decades. This question will be examined through a number of issues. To name just a few of them: How did the respective relationships develop when both countries were temporarily adopting different political systems? What happened once the relevance of “racial science” was discussed within the discipline? How did the colonial revisionist stance advocated by most ethnologists influence these relationships? With regard to the Nazi era, it should be investigated how the dictatorship had an impact on the research approaches and to what degree the respective attitudes to the regime influenced relationships between the scholars. To what extent could the cultural historical approach bridge political and ideological differences between individual representatives?

This study is based on documents from a number of archives, and on academic publications such as biographical and historical studies or contributions to the history of this academic field. Individual academics and their works are considered in the contexts of their networks and under the respective influence of social, political, national and international as well as regional circumstances. The project should also make a general contribution towards the question how closely personal relations, academic work and political loyalties were connected and what could be the significance of these connections in times of crisis and of totalitarian regimes.

This project seeks to investigate new forms of civic engagement pursued by far-right movements and to understand their increasing appeal among “ordinary,” socially established citizens. Instead of studying extreme right political parties or subcultures, the predominant topics in current scholarship, I will look closely at day-to-day activism, using hitherto neglected anthropological methodologies that offer unique insights into the motivations for involvement and the relations between ideas, beliefs and practices. Focusing on far-right groups acting within and between several European countries, the project will investigate the processes of translation between locally grounded and transnational far-right practices and ideologies and the tensions produced as they try to orient themselves around both transnational and local concerns.

Combining participant observation with life stories interviews and a study in the history of ideas, the project aims to explore moral claims and lived experiences of present-day far-right activists. In so doing, it calls into question well-established categorizations (West/East, moral/immoral), emphasizes the importance of emic understandings and motivations of far-right actors, and investigates the different facets of far-right organizations, which, contrary to the common label “hate groups,” increasingly put forward “humanitarian” claims and “positive” visions (of community, society, the future). It aims to bring greater clarity to political discussions within Europe by problematizing a simplistic right-left binary that obscures the nuances of different and overlapping political positions. In addition to making a critical methodological and theoretical contribution to the study of a resurgent European far right, this project will also engage with a set of more enduring issues—the shifting understanding of social solidarity and reciprocity, different means of civic engagement, and the place of morality in politics.

Most human activity in the Arctic takes place along permafrost coasts and these coasts have become one of the most dynamic ecosystems on Earth. Permafrost thaw is exposing these coasts to rapid change, change that threatens the rich biodiversity, puts pressure on communities and contributes to the vulnerability of the global climate system. NUNATARYUK will determine the impacts of thawing coastal and subsea permafrost on the global climate, and will develop targeted and co-designed adaptation and mitigation strategies for the Arctic coastal population.

NUNATARYUK brings together world-leading specialists in natural science and socio-economics to:

1. develop quantitative understanding of the fluxes and fates of organic matter released from thawing coastal and subsea permafrost;
2. assess what risks are posed by thawing coastal permafrost, to infrastructure, indigenous and local communities and people’s health, and from pollution;
3. use this understanding to estimate the long-term impacts of permafrost thaw on global climate and the economy.

NUNATARYUK will be guided by a Stakeholders’ Forum of representatives from Arctic coastal communities and indigenous societies, creating a legacy of collaborative community involvement and a mechanism for developing and applying innovative evidence-based interventions to enable the sustainable development of the Arctic.

Forschung in der Kultur- und Sozialanthropologie findet meist im engen persönlichen Kontakt mit den Beforschten statt. Die eigene Person und die eigene Biografie sind immer Teil dieses Prozesses. Ethnographische Forschung stellt hohe Ansprüche an methodische Kenntnisse, aber auch an Reziprozität, Reflexivität und Ethik. Aus diesen Gründen bringen die Archivierung und Nachnutzung von ethnographischen Daten große Herausforderungen pragmatischer, ethischer und rechtlicher Art mit sich – Herausforderungen, denen sich das Pilotprojekt stellt, um eine an die Eigenarten ethnographischer Forschung angepassten Archivierungsstrategie zu entwickeln.