Kati Lindström

"On creating cultural heritage in Antarctica" (CHAQ. Project leader: Lize-Marié van der Watt) deals with the processes through which cultural heritage production is used to create collective memories of Antarctica and how cultural heritage can be reconciled with a governance system that limits the accumulation of material legacies of human presence. Throughout this project I have dealt with museums and Antarctic heritage in japan, Chile and Argentina, but also the history of the List for Historic Sites and Monuments of the Antarctic Treaty and the uncanny relationship of the environmental protection with cultural heritage. Within the framework of this project, I took part in the Argentine-Swedish research expedition CHAQ2020 to the Antarctic Historic Sites and Monuments left on the Antarctic peninsula by the Nordenskjöld expedition in 1901-1903 for documenting and maintenance work at the sites. The expedition blog Melting History can be found HERE #heritage #Antarctica #environmental history

Peder Robert's ERC grant "Greening the Poles: Science, the Environment, and the Creation of the Modern Arctic and Antarctic" (GRETPOL), aims at understanding the development of environmental science and politics in the polar regions during the period 1945-1991, in transnational historical perspective. Here I work with Japanese, Chilean, Argentine and Soviet materials to figure out when and how the environment became fragile. Key to this lies in the negotiation of mineral extraction activities in Antarctica during almost 2 decades, in 1970s and 1980s, which ended up with the The Protocol on Environmental Protection to the Antarctic Treaty instead of a mineral regime. Looking at these negotiations from the point of view of Latin America, Japan or new member states, gives a new picture of environmental heroes and villains in this process. #Antarctica #environmental history #history of science

I am running a Formas-financed project  Sustainable communities and heritage politics beyond nature-culture divide: Heritage development as a strategy against depopulation in Japan.  The aim is to analyse the use of heritage development as a possible strategy against depopulation, by comparing how different types of heritage relate to the local communities. The project grows out of my earlier affiliation as a Visiting Associate Professor at the Mt. Fuji Centre for Mountain Research at the Shizuoka Prefectural Government, Japan, with a research project World Heritage and local communities (2015-2017) in which I have been studying World Heritage nominations in Japan and the intricate relations between global prestige, expert knowledge and local use, as well as the concepts of nature and culture in the nomination and management of several World heritage sites, mostly "Fujisan, sacred place and source of artistic inspiration", but also "Sites of Japan’s Meiji Industrial Revolution: Iron and Steel, Shipbuilding and Coal Mining" - a series of industrial heritage sites on Kyushu island and Yamaguchi Prefecture. The new Formas project expands the list of studied heritage sites further, including also Jōmon Archaeological Sites in Hokkaidō and Northern Tōhoku, Shiretoko National Park, Historic Villages of Shirakawa-gō in Gifu and Gokayama and Tomioka Silk Mill and related sites, as well as Aso-Kyūshū area that is currently designated as Aso-kujū national park, UNESCO Geopark and FAO Globally Important Agricultural Heritage System. #Japan #heritage #environmental humanities #landscape semiotics

From 2018 to 2023 I am collaborating with Per Högselius' ERC grant NUCLEARWATERS: Putting Water at the Centre of Nuclear Energy History where I work on the Japanese nuclear industry's relation to water and a case study on conflicting resource interests in Soviet Estonia during the early stages of nuclear power plant planning in the Soviet Union. You can read closer about the project on its own WEBSITE. Water risks in Japanese nuclear industry are many: risk of big tsunamis is only one of them. Floods, typhoons and high ground water are all water risks that Japanese engineers have wrestled with for centuries. The big question is, to what extent there is a continuity with these earlier hydraulic traditions within nuclear engineering? And to what extent is nuclear engineering influenced by the engineering culture of non-nuclear colleagues who work to set up sea walls and fortifications under the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism? #Japan #history of technology #environmental history

Formas financed Cold War Coasts: The Transnational Co-Production of Militarized Landscapes (PI Per Högselius) explores from a transnational perspective the pervasive role of the military in shaping the Baltic Sea’s coastal landscapes since 1945 – and the practical challenges that the legacies from the Cold War period give rise to today. Together with Kaarel Vanamölder, Kadri Tüür and Denis Jatsenko we are working on the Estonian cases: military installations on the Western-Estonian islands and Hara submarine base (on the banner) in Lahemaa national park. Project website is HERE. While military installations themselves have been pretty well mapped on the Estonian coast, the lived experience of negotiating the militarised boundaries of bases and border zones is much less documented. #Estonia #environmental history #history of technology #heritage #landscape semiotics

Estonian Environmentalism in the 20th century: ideology, discourses, practices, led by Ulrike Plath, runs until 2024 and analyses the ideological bases of environmentalism in Estonia. Is it a nationalist or global ideology? What is its history? What are the scientific grounds of Estonian environmental protection and how does it compare to other regions in the course of the long 20th century? I am working here with topics close to Cold War Coasts, looking at the interface of national parks and Cold War military infrastructure. How come an emblematic national park such as Lahemaa could be created around a submarine polygon, satisfying both ecologists, national narratives of traditional fishing cultures and the Soviet military? The project is financed by the Estonian Research Council and is placed at the Estonian Centre for Environmental History (KAJAK) at Tallinn University that will be my second affiliation for the duration of the project. #Estonia #Environmental history #heritage