Peter Schweitzer

‘I am a professor of social and cultural anthropology at the University of Vienna. After my studies in Vienna, I spent 20+ years as a professor at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and moved back to Vienna in 2012. My current research interests are focused on how people in arctic communities interact with built and natural environments. Within Snow2Rain, I am responsible for the social science part of the project.

After defending my PhD dissertation focused on the ethnohistory of Northeastern Siberia at the University of Vienna in 1990, I joined the Department of Anthropology at the University of Alaska of Fairbanks in 1991. After having risen from Assistant Professor to Full Professor by the early 2000s, I eventually became Alaska Director of the Experimental Program to Simulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR). In late 2012, I returned to my alma mater and accepted a position of Full Professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology (IKSA) at the University of Vienna, while retaining an appointment as Professor Emeritus at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. From October 2016 through February 2021, I served as head of department at IKSA.

I am a past president of the International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA), and past chair of the Social and Human Sciences Working Group of the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC). After recently completing a large project about a railroad line in eastern Siberia and its entanglements with the people of the region, I just started an ERC Advanced Grant about the impacts of transport infrastructures in the Arctic on local communities. I have been interested in the local (arctic) manifestations and perceptions of global climate change for 15+ years, ever since we started to explore how environmental change was being understood and addressed in northwestern Alaska in 2003. Snow2Rain is a tremendous interdisciplinary opportunity to build on these experiences.’