Christine Bichsel

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

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 at the Department of Geosciences at the University of Fribourg, 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 and the University of Melbourne.

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) and the Swiss Polar Institute (SPI) Flagship Initiative From ice to microorganisms and humans: Toward an interdisciplinary understanding of climate change impacts on the Third Pole (PAMIR) (2022-2026).

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

Teaching and courses

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