We are pleased to announce our first conference panel at this Year's Arctic Circle Assembly: You're Not My Friend Anymore! When friendship issues extend beyond the playground.
This panel explores the processes through which international friendship is both constructed and dismantled within the global scientific community. Utilizing academia as a political instrument for war or peace has long been a core element of the functionalist international order. Following the Cold War, academic exchanges, summer schools, and collaborative research initiatives were heavily incorporated into diplomatic agreements—a tradition carried forward by activities like the ISIRA "cooperative initiative" with the International Arctic Science Committee (IASC), which remains central to assisting Arctic science and sustainable development in the Russian Arctic.
Specifically, this panel will examine how these efforts, which originally aimed to foster shared ontological frameworks, are radically reframed during times of geopolitical tension and armed conflict. We will analyze how cooperative practices are transformed into security risks, contributing to the construction of sharp epistemic divisions and becoming subject to active restriction.
Panelists will investigate this regional dynamic through spatial and temporal perspectives, looking at how it is further strained by competitive US maneuvers and complex bilateral relations between Arctic states and Observer nations. Ultimately, while the scientific community enables a unique continuity over time that fosters trust, this dialogue is increasingly distorted by geopolitical posturing. This session unpacks these dynamics by looking directly at the intersections of International Relations (IR), militarization, extractivism, and broader geopolitical transformations.
