Abstract

My PhD Research Project proposal, made in 2021, required Antarctic fieldwork that did not occur. The experience of attempting to organise this fieldwork inadvertently became an ethnographic investigation of Antarctic institutional fieldwork structures. This work highlighted complicated intersections between ‘boundary work’ and ‘studying up’ in early career polar humanities research. In this presentation, I use this story to explore how the polar context complicates the binary of ‘going there’ and power dynamics of fieldwork often highlighted in geographical discussions. This is connected in large part to the unusual political construction of Antarctica as a ‘continent for science’ and the associated influences on researcher access. I analyse my own experience and argue that it is imperative that, and potentially would be very positive if, humanities and social science fieldwork were integrated into the logistical and funding structures of institutions facilitating polar field research. These arguments raise important themes including the necessity of examining the influence of imaginaries of Antarctic places on the norms of place-based research in polar locales, it returns geographers to the question of the complex role of fieldwork in definitions of the geographical discipline, and reinforces the importance of these considerations in a context of increasing environmental threat and uncertainty.