Welcome to my personal website. I am a historical geographer interested in critical histories of Arctic exploration. My work is influenced by a number of different literatures including exploration studies, histories of science, anthropology and post-/decolonial studies.
Current Research
I am an Assistant Professor in Cultural and Historical Geography in the School of Geography at the University of Nottingham.
I am currently writing up research that formed part of the ERC funded Arctic Cultures Project based at the Scott Polar Research Institute and Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge. This is an ongoing interdisciplinary project that studies the histories and geographies of knowledge production in the Arctic from the eighteenth- through to the twentieth-century.
More information about my wider research interests can be found here. You can also read the blog posts below which discuss similar themes.
Latest blog posts:
Inuit Make Glasgow?: Arctic Material Culture in Scotland’s Museums
One of the saddest parts of leaving my previous post at the Scott Polar Research Institute in Cambridge was no longer having regular access to the Institute’s Polar Museum. The museum houses a large number of artefacts, primarily associated with British exploration of the North and South Poles, but importantly also holds extensive collections of…
Confronting the Colonial Histories of the Innaanganeq Meteorite
During my recent archival work at the Nationalmuseet in Copenhagen, I was having a conversation about my research with museum’s curator and senior researcher Martin Appelt. As our conversation drew to a close, Martin paused and then asked me if I wanted to watch a meteorite being removed from the museum’s courtyard. Slightly confused, but…
Peter R. Martin 