Perceiving Permafrost:
A Conversation
Date: March 22nd 2025 14:00
Location: Atelier Nord, Olaf Ryes plass 2 (entrance from Sofienberggata)
To realize the exhibition «A feeling of longing that freezes and thaws» Taylor Alaina Liebenstein Smith collaborated with several permafrost researchers from the Center for Biogeochemistry in the Anthropocene at the University of Oslo.
As part of this event, three of the researchers, Mats Ippach, Anfisa Pismeniuk and Sebastian Westermann, will briefly present their own work and engage in a dialogue about interdisciplinary approaches to the perception of permafrost, both within and beyond artistic and scientific research contexts.
Sebastian Westermann is a professor at the University of Oslo who investigates thawing permafrost in a warming climate. His research combines field measurements and remote sensing with numerical models that can assess the current and predict the future state of the permafrost in Norway and world-wide. Sebastian has studied permafrost peatlands in Norway for more than a decade and witnessed the drastic changes that these sensitive ecosystems have experienced in recent years.
Mats Rouven Ippach is a doctoral research fellow at the Department of Geosciences and Centre of Biogeochemistry in the Anthropocene, University of Oslo, studying the composition of soil organic matter (SOM) in boreal environments, especially permafrost peat plateaus. He holds an MSc in Environmental Geosciences from the University of Oslo, with a thesis about the analysis and behavior of PFOA (PFAS, “forever chemicals”) in soil samples under methane oxidizing conditions.
Anfisa Pismeniuk is a permafrost researcher, currently doing a PhD at the Department of Geosciences and the Centre for Biogeochemistry in the Anthropocene at the University of Oslo. Her research focuses on the greenhouse gas emissions from permafrost peatlands in Finnmark, Northern Norway, within the context of climate change. She has a background in biogeochemistry and paleoenvironmental reconstructions of ice-rich permafrost regions in the Arctic.
