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Katja Doose

Dr

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 katja.doose@unifr.ch
 +41 26 300 8972
 

Senior Researcher
Department of Geosciences

+41 26 300 8972

Biography

Katja Doose is an environmental historian and a historian of science for Russia and the Soviet Union. Since she finished her PhD at the University of Tübingen in 2018, that explored the 1988 Armenian earthquake and its socio-political implications, she has researched and taught at the University of Birmingham, the Advanced School of Social Sciences in Paris (EHESS) and the Centre for International Environmental 糖心Volg of the Graduate Institute (IHEID) in Geneva. Her research focuses on the history of Russian and Soviet earth science and the experiences of human-nature interactions from the late 19th to the 20th century. She is currently working on her book manuscript entitled "White Coal for white gold. An environmental history of glacier studies in Central Asia". Since March 2021 she is a senoir researcher in the SNF funded project "The History of Soviet glaciology in Central Asia" headed by Christine Bichsel. Since June 2024 she is the project leader of the SNF project "Myths of equality. A gendered history of Central Asia, 1870-1970" (2024-2027).

Research and publications

  • Publications
    27 publications

    Tektonik der Perestroika: Das Erdbeben und die Neuordnung Armeniens, 1985鈥�1998
    Katja Doose (G枚ttingen: B枚hlau Verlag K枚ln, 2019), ISBN: 978-3-412-51327-6 | Book

    Architekturf眉hrer Taschkent
    Philipp Meuser, G枚tz Burggraf, Klaus Hartung, Tulkinoj Kadirowa, Marcus Bensmann, Alischer Sabirow, Rawschan Nasarow, Johannes Dahl, Katja Doose, Romy Lehns (Berlin: DOM Publ., 2012), ISBN: 978-3-86922-165-6 | Book

  • Research projects

    Myths of equality: the gendered history of science in Central Asia (1870-1970)
    Status: Ongoing

    Start 01.10.2024
    End 30.09.2027
    Funding SNSF 
    This research project investigates the influence of gender on scientific practices in Central Asia's Pamir Mountains from the 1870s to the 1970s. By examining the experiences of female and male scientists, we aim to understand how gender dynamics shaped scientific knowledge in remote environments. While there is a growing body of literature on the history of gendered science, it is very much focused on experiences in circumstances in Western, democratic countries. We will focus on gendered science in Central Asia. Our objectives are: (1) to analyse gender identity negotiation among female scientists, (2) to explore how male scientists constructed their gender identities in remote areas and (3) to investigate gender's intersection with ethnicity in shaping scientific practices. We employ archival research, visual analysis, and interviews with scientists from the Soviet era. Our research will broaden the understanding of gender's role in science, enhancing the historiography of Central Asia and the history of science.

    Myths of equality: the gendered history of science in Central Asia (1870-1970)
    Status: Ongoing

    Start 01.10.2024
    End 30.09.2027
    Funding Other 

    Our project examines the role of gender in the history of science in Central Asia. Situated at the peripheries of the Russian Empire and the USSR, the role of gender in Central Asian scientific communities was particularly complex and multi-layered. In SEQUAL, we investigate the case of field science, i.e., scientific disciplines and research methods that involve the collection and study of data directly in natural environments, rather than in controlled laboratory settings, such as glaciology, meteorology, geology, and geography. We argue that the analysis of field science is of particular relevance to our aim of understanding gender dynamics in scientific communities in Central Asia, as historically field sciences have been and remain dominated by men and framed through masculine discourse and practice. The remoteness and inaccessibility of the mountain areas as the field where the Central Asian scientists worked framed field sciences as a challenging endeavour requiring skills and abilities coded as masculine. This coding of field sciences as masculine provides the rationale for this project via two entry points. First, despite this clear coding, male identities of scientists in Central Asia are rarely made visible and examined as gendered in a way the gendered identities of Western scientists have been interrogated by existing scholarship. SEQUAL argues that the particular situation of male scientists in Central Asia as either the subjects of the Russian Empire or citizens of the Soviet Union added important dimensions to their gendered experience of science, which was shaped by the dominant ideological imperatives. Second, we will recover the role of female scientists in a nuanced way. While Central Asia is often seen as a place where gendered dynamics were particularly conservative, our project challenges this narrative and demonstrates that women, mostly of Slavic origin, frequently participated in carrying out work in, and making significant impact on the field sciences. For women, this meant to embrace the traditional discourse of femininity while taking advantage of the state’s ideological commitment to gender equality. Our project brings the two gendered dimensions together as it explores, in a pioneering way, how these separate scientific identities shaped each other through a complex interplay of relationships in the field, where notions of femininity and masculinity constantly shifted, leading to the gendered subjectivity of knowledge.

    Fedchenko: An Eco-Biography of a Glacier
    Status: Completed

    Start 01.10.2023
    End 28.02.2025
    Funding Other 

    Planning and conducting a series of workshops that examine the history of the Fedchenko Glacier, one of the world’s longest nonpolar glaciers located near Pamir, Tajikistan. (12 months)

    The purpose of this application is to pilot an interdisciplinary project on the natural and cultural history of the Fedchenko Glacier (Pamir, Tajikistan), one of the world’s longest glaciers outside the polar regions. Conceived as a contribution to both the environmental humanities and the emerging field of the “ice humanities,” it consists of two goals: 1) to produce a transdisciplinary eco-biography of a uniquely significant glacier that will advance our knowledge of how glaciers came to be understood and offer a cultural perspective on the role of glaciology in climate change studies--subjects hitherto neglected by humanists and humanistic social scientists, and 2) to develop an innovative transdisciplinary approach to studying glaciers. At a time when glaciers are fast disappearing, we return by way of the Fedchenko to the moment of their appearance in both the scientific and cultural imagination.

    Timescapes of ice: Soviet glacier science in Central Asia, 1950s-1980s
    Status: Ongoing

    Start 01.03.2021
    End 31.08.2026
    Funding SNSF 
    This project researches the history of Soviet glaciology in the Pamir and Tian Shan mountain systems. Pamir and Tian Shan are part of the Third Pole, the Earth鈥檚 third-largest ice store next to the Arctic and Antarctic regions and Alaska. The Third Pole experiences a general trend of deglaciation. There is a lack of systematic glaciological ground measurements of the Third Pole. In order to estimate changes in ice cover, and their social and environmental consequences, scientists upscale the only available measurement data to regional and global levels. Yet little is known about why and how this data is available for upscaling today. This is problematic, as the upscaling of historical data has methodological, political and ethical implications. This project examines the social and material practices, geopolitics and epistemology of Soviet glaciology in order to shed light on the history of glaciological measurements in the Pamir and Tian Shan. In particular, it examines Soviet 鈥渢imescapes of ice鈥�, i.e. the temporal concepts and practices of Soviet glacier science. The project is guided by four objectives. First, the project aims to further the history of physical geography as a science through a study of Soviet glaciology. Second, it aims to advance the environmental history of the Cold War period through a study of Soviet glacier science in Central Asia from the 1950s to the 1980s. Third, it aims to strengthen the connections between environmental history and the history of sciences through conceptual and methodological innovation. Fourth, it aims to advance the interdisciplinary dialogue between the social and natural sciences of climate change through the historical contextualisation of Soviet glacier measurement data. The main research question interrogates how Soviet glacier science in Central Asia during the 1950s to the 1980s produced timescapes of ice. The four concepts of timescapes, disciplinary space, geopolitics, and strata are mobilised to answer this research question. The project adopts case study research as an approach. Case studies will be carried out on the history of glacier science on Abramov (Kyrgyzstan) and Tuyuk-Su glaciers (Kazakhstan). The methodology of the project entails library and archival research. Data collection will involve a total of 26 months of fieldwork in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and the Russian Federation. This project is intended to contribute to the history of physical geography as a science, further the environmental history of the Cold War period, strengthen the connections between environmental history and the history of sciences, and advance the interdisciplinary dialogue between the social and natural sciences of climate change