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Fedchenko observatory, on the Vanch-Yakh glacier, Ikram Nazarov and other overwinterers during the International Geophysical Year 1958-1959, private archive of Igor Logachev.
ERC Strating Grant
Funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme (Grant Agreement No. 101222577)
ABOUT THE PROJECT
ENVIROSHIFT examines the history of the Earth sciences in Central Asia and the Caucasus from the late nineteenth century to the end of the Soviet period.
Combining environmental history, the history of science, and the histories of the Russian and Soviet empire, the project investigates how Earth scientists studied, conceptualized, and transformed mountain environments in the context of imperial and Soviet projects of modernization and resource exploitation.
ENVIROSHIFT challenges histories of Soviet science that privilege metropolitan institutions by examining Central Asia and the Caucasus as historically significant sites where Earth scientists studied, conceptualized, and debated environmental change.
At a time when climate change debates increasingly rely on knowledge produced by the Earth sciences, ENVIROSHIFT brings regions often absent from these histories into view and situates Central Asia and the Caucasus within broader global environmental debates.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
• How was knowledge about mountains, climate, natural hazards, and environmental change produced through Earth science practices in Central Asia and the Caucasus?
• How did scientific institutions, field practices, and expertise evolve across changing imperial and Soviet political contexts?
• How did Earth scientists study, intervene in, and at times seek to protect mountain environments in relation to state ambitions to transform nature?
RESEARCH THEMES
With a focus on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries
• Scientific exploration and field practices in mountain environments
• Environmental knowledge, expertise, and the production of scientific authority
• Glaciers, natural hazards, and the historical study of changing environments
• Resource extraction, infrastructure, and the environmental history of Soviet modernity
PUBLICATIONS : Katja Doose. ChristineBichsel. Growing Deserts and Shrinking Glaciers: The Desiccation Debates and Climate Change in the Late Nineteenth Century. The Russian Review. 84: 2025;217–233. https://doi.org/10.1111/russ.70008)