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Department of Geography

 

 

Field practices and environmental science in the Canadian Arctic, 1950-2000

This doctoral research, conducted 2000-2004, was concerned with the changing epistemic role of fieldwork and field practices in physically based Arctic environmental science, over the second half of the twentieth century.

I am interested in the history of scientific research on northern Canada over the last half-century, and in understanding how this relates to the epistemology and ontology of Arctic field science. This project emerges out of a geographical sensitivity, but gathers an increasingly interdisciplinary momentum.

The overall research plan thus involves the utilisation of various sources and methodologies, including archival examination of Government reports and personal papers, interviews with field scientists, officials and community leaders, and ethnographic accounts of work as an Arctic scientific field assistant.