Giving Voice to the Ground in Environmental Research: A Transdisciplinary Approach for the Alaska Highway Case Study

Opfergelt, Sophie;Servais, Olivier
(2025) Conference on inter- and transdisciplinary research for sustainable development 2025 — Location: Louvain-la-Neuve (21.November.2025)

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State of the art
 Over the past two decades, environmental humanities and social sciences have emphasized the agency of non-humans and the need to move beyond anthropocentric research frameworks (Latour, 1999; Descola, 2005; Haraway, 2008; Tsing, 2015). While this shift has gained wide acceptance conceptually, concrete methodologies to integrate human and non-human voices in empirical research remain scarce. Existing studies on permafrost thaw underline the vulnerability of infrastructures and communities in the circumpolar North (Ford et al., 2010; Streletskiy et al., 2019, 2023), but often treat soils, ice, or infrastructures as background variables rather than active agents. esearch questions
 Our project asks: How can « ground » non-humans (e.g., permafrost, soils, infrastructures) be integrated as full actors in environmental research? More specifically: * What methodologies allow us to capture the temporalities and agency of these non-humans alongside human narratives? * How can this approach reframe socio-ecological transformations
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Opfergelt, S., & Servais, O. (2025). Giving Voice to the Ground in Environmental Research: A Transdisciplinary Approach for the Alaska Highway Case Study. Conference on inter- and transdisciplinary research for sustainable development 2025, Louvain-la-Neuve. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/269685