06/15/2026
Tanya Bakhmetyeva, Associate Professor of History and Associate Director of the Humanities Center at the University of Rochester, has been invited to participate in Cryohistories and Cryosciences: A Decade of Action, an international workshop to be held at the Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, on July 9–10, 2026.
The workshop is an invitation-only event bringing together just twelve scholars from around the world whose research bridges the histories of the cryosphere, climate science, and environmental knowledge. Participants will explore how historical perspectives can contribute to the United Nations Decade of Action for Cryospheric Sciences (2025–2034), a global initiative focused on understanding and responding to the rapid transformation of the world's ice environments.
A key outcome of the workshop will be a collaborative position paper examining how historians and scientists can work together to produce more meaningful histories of glaciers, ice sheets, permafrost, and climate change. Bakhmetyeva's participation reflects her ongoing research on the history of glaciology, cryospheric science, and environmental knowledge in the Soviet Union and Central Asia, including her current book project (with Stewart Weaver) on the Fedchenko Glacier, the world's longest glacier outside the polar regions.
