Christine Bichsel

photo

 christine.bichsel@unifr.ch
 +41 26 300 9246
 https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4966-7925

Political geography, environmental history, history of science, critical water studies

Professor
Department of Geosciences

PER 14 bu. 3.327.2
Ch. du Musée 4
1700 Fribourg
PER 14, 3.327.2

Biography

Christine Bichsel is a scholar of political geography and environmental history. She holds a PhD in Geography from the University of Berne. Her research explores how relations of power and violence shape knowledge, infrastructure and the environment. Her geographic areas of focus include Central Asia, Russia and China. Her scientific articles have appeared in Environment and Planning D, Water History and Slavic Review among other journals. A Professor in Human Geography, she teaches courses on political geography and environmental history. Christine Bichsel has also taught and researched at the University of Zürich, and held visiting researcher positions at the National University of Singapore, the University of Melbourne and the University of Cambridge.

Her research has dealt extensively with contemporary and past water issues in Central Asia. Her ethnography of irrigation showed how international peacebuilding initiatives attempted to resolve water conflicts in the Ferghana Valley. Her environmental history of irrigation on the Hungry Steppe revealed the relationships between water, infrastructure and political rule in Soviet Central Asia. Funding for her research was provided by several Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) grants. Christine Bichsel is the author of the book Conflict Transformation in Central Asia: Irrigation Disputes in the Ferghana Valley published with Routledge in 2009. Her next book Heavy Water: The Hungry Steppe Campaign in Soviet Tajikistan, 1958-1979 is under contract with Ohio University Press.

Christine Bichsel’s current research explores the history of Russian and Soviet glaciology in Central Asia. She examines the historical practices, geopolitics and epistemologies of glaciology in Central Asia. Her focus is on how Imperial Russian and Soviet science identified glaciers as scientific objects and established a relationship between glacier changes and time.  Christine Bichsel’s research contributes to unravelling the ideas of time and history that currently inform scientific concepts of climate change and the Anthropocene. Her research is funded by the SNSF project Timescapes of ice: Soviet glacier science in Central Asia, 1950s to 1980s (2021-2025), the National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) grant Fedchenko: An Eco-Biography of a Glacier (2023-2025) and the Swiss Polar Institute (SPI) project History of Glacier Science (2024-2026).

Her current research also explores the geographies of science fiction. She focuses on the rising popularity of Chinese science fiction works. She examines how Chinese science fiction takes shape within the fields of power and politics in China, and through the geopolitics of its genre by contesting the current hegemony of European and North American works. She is interested in science fiction’s recent emergence as a crucial mode of thinking at the planetary scale. Christine Bichsel’s research reveals the relationships between fictional speculation, shared imaginary practices and networks of discursive and material circulation through which Chinese science fiction becomes a transcultural phenomenon. Her research is funded by the SNSF project The cultural logistics of Chinese science fiction (2021-2025).

Research and publications

  • Conference contributions
    36 publications

    Archives on thin ice: Methodologies for a cryo-history of Tajikistan
    Christine Bichsel, Living Cryosphere Lab, Scott Polar Research Institute, University of Cambridge, UK (7.10.2024) | Conference

    Predicting weather to harness water. The emergence of hydrometeorology in Central Asia
    Christine Bichsel, Expertise, Scientific Authority, and Governance in the Age of the Anthropocene, 2-4 September 2024, Geneva, Switzerland: (2.9.2024) | Conference

    From the margins of the Third Pole: geopolitics of the glacier-climate linkage
    Christine Bichsel, 4th World Congress of Environmental History, 19-23 August 2024, Oulu, Finland: (21.8.2024) | Conference

    Cross-border and local water disputes
    Christine Bichsel, Training course on Water Diplomacy for teaching staff of Central Asia universities, 5-16 August, Tashkent, Uzbekistan (9.8.2024) | Conference

    On cold ground: Dmitrii L’vovich Ivanov and early glaciology in Russian Turkestan
    Christine Bichsel, Measuring Eurasia. A conference on Survey Sciences at the Edges of Empire, University College Dublin, 26-27 June 2024, Dublin, Ireland: (26.6.2024) | Conference

    Negotiating dryness: Environmental imaginaries of Central Asia’s aridity in the early 20th century
    Katja Doose, Christine Bichsel, Climate Change, empire and the legacies of environmental determinism, 18-19 March 2024, Munich, Germany: (18.3.2024) | Conference

    Central Asia: Environment and Water
    Christine Bichsel, Foreign Service Institute, ASSCA6001 - Central Asia Sub-Regional Overview (21.2.2024) | Conference

    From the margins of the Third Pole: the geopolitics of cryosphere in Tajikistan
    Christine Bichsel, Histories, Cultures, Environments and Politics (HCEP) seminar series, Scott Polar Research Institute, 20 February 2024, Cambridge, UK (20.2.2024) | Conference

  • Publications
    33 publications

    In Memoriam: Julia Obertreis
    Christine Bichsel, Environmental History (2024) | Journal article

  • Research projects

Teaching and courses

Show in course program