I am a research fellow in cultural studies at KU Leuven with Arctic research based in Svalbard, Norway and I am a founding member of the Svalbard Social Science Initiative (SSSI https://www.svalbardsocialscience.com/) and board member since 2020.

My work on Svalbard started during my PhD studies and my practice-based project, ‘Identity in Change’, based in Longyearbyen, Svalbard. The project began by looking at various lenses through which Longyearbyen could be understood. The work eventually incorporated a wide range of methods, from classic ethnographic work to a broadening of the visual methodologies and practice-based photography that became increasingly important. Over time, questions of framing and how that impacts the entire process from the research question, to the research methods and subsequent production(s) of knowledge, to the analysis and presentation of the research ‘findings’ became core issues to think through and with. Accordingly, the research became an exploration of ways of knowing, probing into questions about how knowledge is produced and analyzed, and how it shapes—or frames—what we understand and ‘know’.

Since completing the PhD, I have continued to work on Arctic related topics and am a Research Fellow in cultural studies at Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven, Belgium. I am working for the NSF funded NNA (Navigating the New Arctic) project and am conducting a case study on Svalbard that is looking into residents’ perceptions of disaster risk reduction. My interests range from embodied understanding of place, to visual methods, to de-colonizing the western academic approach. In 2022, I was awarded the Rachel Tanur Memorial Prize in Visual Sociology for work conducted in Skansbukta, Svalbard.

I grew up in Cambridge, MA, USA in a French-oriented household where critical thinking, politics, gourmet cuisine and performing arts were part of daily life. My high school years were spent in the US, Morocco and Norway. I started my university studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) in Arctic Biology and then moved to University of Wisconsin-Madison and switched studies to focus on South Asia where I spent 3 years doing fieldwork in Nepal completing a BS and MA in South Asian Studies.

Subsequently, I have worked for 7 years in television as a graphic artist. I then completed an MBA in Luxury Brand Management at the French business school, École Supérieure des Sciences Economiques et Commerciales (ESSEC), and worked as a specialized consultant in Paris. These education and life experiences in a wide range of sectors and cultures, combined with my ongoing interest in issues of identity, helped me develop a range of skills I used during my lens-based PhD research in cultural studies at KU Leuven.

If you would like to follow me on the journey, you can find me on Twitter and Instagram @dina78N or contact me by email (dina.broderoger@kuleuven.be).

Photo credit @Graeme Chesters (part of the Svalbard People series)

Published by Women in the Arctic and Antarctic