Research infrastructures and Arctic (In)security

Application summary

How do research infrastructures relate to Arctic (in)security? This doctoral project explores how material objects used for knowledge-building mediate both scientific and security concerns in the Arctic. By examining Arctic research infrastructures as components of assemblage the project provides empirical and conceptual insight on the science-security nexus in contemporary international relations. The research question is driven by a hypothesis that infrastructures are tied to particular affections – emotions, feelings or attitudes – that enable securitization. However, rather than examining the securitization of research infrastructures, the project seeks to uncover the conditions and reasons behind such processes. Key is to understand how affections towards the social, material and spatial attributes of research infrastructures enable securitizing action. As such, the project expands established scholarship on securitization and contributes to emerging interdisciplinary literature on more-than-human and volumetric approaches in critical security studies. By focusing on epistemic infrastructures the project also sheds light on the politics of knowledge-production and responds to emerging scholarly and policy-oriented calls to discuss the politics of science.