Nelson Soto Santibáñez

Laboratório de Estudos Antárticos em Ciências Humanas

Publications | Publications | Publications |

I am an anthropologist (UC Temuco), photographer and cultural manager. I am Associate Researcher of the “White Landscapes” Project, coordinated by Dr. Andrés Zarankin in the Laboratório de Estudos Antárticos em Ciências Humanas – LEACH of UFMG (Brazil).

Seeking to understand the sociocultural strategies that human beings (mainly scientific and military) use to inhabit and colonize Antarctica, I did ethnographic work with PRONTAR (Brazil) in camps, ships and Ferraz Station, in the South Shetlands Islands for six months between 2011 and 2012. In parallel (2009 and 2012), I developed ethnographic and historical research in the gateway cities of Punta Arenas, Ushuaia and Christchurch, the city where I did a research internship at Gateway Antarctica at the University of Canterbury. I wrote “Human Tentacles to Ice” (2011), Master’s Thesis in Anthropology (UCN-UTA) about the history, connections, flows and Antarctic qualities of Punta Arenas. I am a member of the Antarctic Social Sciences Working Group of APECS, as well as a partner and editor of APECS Chile. Today, I make talks (diffusion) about Antarctic themes in academic and school spaces.

  • Research projects / interests:
    • Antarctic and Polar Anthropology
    • Human-environmental relations
    • Science, technology and Society
    • Strategies of human colonization of Antarctica
    • Door-port cities (or gateway cities)
    • Education & antarctic awareness
    • The blind and blindness
    • Practices of rural football (Sports Studies)
  • For publications see:

Keywords: Colonization of the Antarctic; Antarctic settlements & population; Antarctic people; Antarctic culture; Gateways cities; Anthropology; Ethnography; STS.

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