Understanding sea ice change around the Arctic and its impacts requires thinking beyond and across traditional disciplinary boundaries. While research into the physical science of sea ice often receives most of the attention, sea ice research is equally pervasive within the social sciences and humanities, e.g. anthropological studies of the role of sea ice in northern and Indigenous communities, economic and geopolitical analyses of the impact of sea ice loss, or arts and humanities investigations into how sea ice is depicted by Indigenous and non-Indigenous makers and within visual, material, and literary cultures. Moreover, Indigenous knowledge, creativity, and relationships to the land further disrupt disciplinary silos and indicate important local sites of experience. Engaging these diverse approaches presents an opportunity to improve our understanding of sea ice as a human and natural system and encourage cross-disciplinary and community collaboration.

We are calling for participants for a two-day workshop on multi-disciplinary sea ice research and knowledge to be held at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, on February 19-20, 2026. Our aim is to bring together researchers and practitioners working on or living with sea ice, and who come from a variety of academic career stages and perspectives, including physical science (e.g. remote sensing, climate modeling), social science (e.g. anthropology, sociology, geography), the arts and humanities (e.g. creative practice, art history, environmental history).

The goals of this workshop are twofold. First, it will provide a space for researchers, knowledge holders, and practitioners to share and disseminate current research on and experiences of Arctic sea ice encompassing a wide variety of perspectives. Second, we hope to leverage the broad backgrounds of participants to co-produce a review paper focused on multi-disciplinary ways of researching sea ice, integrating the arts, humanities, social sciences, and physical sciences. The workshop itself will consist of a one day symposium made up of presentations, followed by a one day paper writing workshop where we will together brainstorm and plan the paper. We welcome anyone who is interested in engaging with multi-disciplinary sea ice research; participants do not necessarily already need to be conducting interdisciplinary sea ice research.

If interested in applying, please submit a ~150 work abstract along with a brief biography by September 15, 2025 to the following form: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/3yPpHMCzwp

Travel funds are available to support workshop participants, but please indicate on the form if you have any additional funds that you could use to support your participation.

This event is funded by From the Floe Edge: Visualising Sea Ice Change in Kinngait, Nunavut, a British Academy Knowledge Frontiers International Interdisciplinary Research Project award to I. Gapp (University of Aberdeen), S. Cooley (Duke University), and the West-Baffin Co-operative.

Any questions should be directed to the organizers at: isabelle.gappabdn.ac.uk and/or sarah.cooleyduke.edu