WATER ECOLOGIES ~ Melting

Session 1 — April 15th 
Tropical ice and the cryosphere
with Juan Pablo Pacheco 

This opening session introduces the seminar’s conceptual framework through the lens of water ecologies and blue humanities, focusing on ice as a planetary sensor rather than a distant or marginal phenomenon. The session explores the paradox of tropical glaciers and their accelerated disappearance, placing them in relation to extractive economies and emerging data center infrastructures in Latin America. Ice is approached as both a material archive and a vulnerable presence, prompting questions of mourning, care, and planetary sensing.

Session 2 — April 22nd 
Greenland 
with Marco Tedesco

Focusing on Greenland and the Circumpolar Arctic region, this session dives into emerging environmental science on ice ecologies, its implications for climate justice, and the political consequences of accelerating ice-sheet melting. Rising sea levels, climate feedback loops, and glacial instability are discussed alongside questions of governance, sovereignty, and political ecology. Special attention will be given to Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) and how melting ice reshapes geopolitical claims, infrastructural ambitions, and indigenous rights, situating Greenland within broader planetary struggles over territory and climate responsibility.

Session 3 — April 29th 
Geopolitics of Antarctica
with Daniella Sampaio

This session introduces Antarctica as a unique continent shaped by extreme environmental conditions and an unusual political history. It begins by explaining what makes Antarctica different from other regions of the world, including the absence of permanent populations and its separation from the Arctic. The seminar then traces early human activity in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when sealing and whaling connected Antarctica to global trade and competition. The session explores the tensions that emerge from how states have tried to demonstrate sovereignty through symbolic acts, physical presence, and official declarations. It then shows how science offered a peaceful alternative, leading to international cooperation and the Antarctic Treaty, which postponed sovereignty disputes through consensus decision-making. We then conclude by highlighting South American involvement in Antarctica.

Session 4 — May 6th
Kangia: listening to the melt
with Jana Winderen

Jana will be sharing her experiences from her work in the Arctic regions, both above and underwater. For example, her first meetings with the glacier Vatnajõkul in Iceland, Jostedalsbreen in Norway and the ice fjord Kangia in Greenland. She will be talking about the acoustics under the sea ice in the Barents sea, made audible by to the Bearded seals, Wahrus and the melting ice Jana will also be talking about her return last year to the Folgefonna glazier on the west coast of Norway, after 18 years.