Unruly ground: rebuilding the Arctic urban in the age of climate crisis

I am an urban sociologist and a science and technology studies scholar exploring the role of maintenance and repair of built environments in shaping urban futures. My current project is a comparative ethnographic study of how experts and ordinary inhabitants in Longyearbyen and Pyramiden produce knowledge about and resolve dilemmas regarding thawing permafrost. My goal is to develop a view of permafrost (and urban ground, more generally) that demonstrates how it turns from an invisible background of human lives to an active–albeit vulnerable–​matter to reckon with.