Dina Brode-Roger

Photo credit: Graeme Chesters

In residence: November 2026

Dina Brode-Roger, PhD, is a Research Fellow in Cultural Studies at KU Leuven, Belgium. Her research centres on place-based inquiry in the Arctic, where she works with an identity-of-place conceptual framework in conjunction with photography as a method of inquiry. While much of her work has been conducted in the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard, her current projects extend to Iceland and Greenland. She received the Rachel Tanur Memorial Visual Sociology Award in 2022 and was a Grímsson Fellow in the Westfjords of Iceland in 2023.

During her residency at Artica Svalbard, Brode-Roger will explore the everyday history of Longyearbyen through tableware and other domestic objects that have shaped daily life in the settlement. While histories of mono-company towns often focus on mining and industrial development, her project shifts attention towards the ordinary experiences of the people who have lived there and the objects that can hold memories of those experiences.

Working with Svalbard Museum, Brode-Roger will combine archival research with photographs shared by current and former residents and conversations about their experiences. Photographs of tableware and domestic objects will provide a starting point for remembering and sharing stories, while historical photographs and objects from the museum archive will help trace how dining and domestic life in Longyearbyen have changed over time.

Through photography and storytelling, the project brings together objects, memories and practices of home-making to explore how a sense of belonging is created in a place shaped by transiency. It asks what everyday objects can reveal about the histories of those who have called Longyearbyen home.