Breadcrumb
Bio
Interface of social sciences, humanities, and the natural sciences; long-term human ecodynamics and climate change.
I study the human ecology of Arctic and Subarctic regions; the environmental, social, and human history of countries bordering the North Atlantic; studies of sustainability and adaptability in Iceland, Greenland, Norway and Canada; changing seasonality in the Arctic; historical climatology of northern Europe and reconstruction of sea ice incidence; syntheses of proxy climate records; North Atlantic fisheries history; the Viking Age; environmental humanities; medieval literature of Iceland; and the analysis of primary historical texts in the Nordic languages.
Positions
- Professor Adjunct, Hunter College, CUNY, New York
- Adjunct Professor, Royal Roads University, Canada
- Associate Professor, Arctic Research Centre (CER-ARCTIC), Autonomous University of Barcelona
- Visiting Professor, University of the Highlands and Islands, Scotland
- Visiting Fellow, Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK
Education
- PhD: University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, 1982
Awards
- St Andrews Article Prize in European Environmental History, European Society for Environmental History, 2019
- Fellow, Royal Meteorological Society, UK, 2013
- Dorothy Martin Faculty Fellowship, University of Colorado Boulder, 2009
Research
Interface of social sciences, humanities, and the natural sciences; long-term human ecodynamics and climate change.
Current and recent awards:
- Arctic Climate Predictions: Pathways to Resilient, Sustainable Societies (ARCPATH), a Nordforsk-funded Centre of Excellence project
- Reflections of Change: The Natural World in Literary and Historical Sources from Iceland ca. AD 800 to 1800 (ICECHANGE) funded by the Swedish Foundation for Humanities and Social Sciences
- The Mývatn District of Iceland: Sustainability, Environment and Change ca. 1700 to 1950 (MYSEAC) funded by RANNÍS (The Icelandic Research Fund)
- The Foundations of Map-Making and Geography in Iceland funded by RANNÍS (The Icelandic Research Fund)
- Northern Knowledge for Resilience, Sustainable Environments and Adaptation in Coastal Communities (NORSEACC) funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Pending research applications:
- Interdisciplinary Approaches to Convergent Challenges in the Arctic (INTERARC) to Nordforsk. PI Astrid Ogilvie
- P2C2: Reconstructing Abrupt Changes in Sea Ice Export toward the North Atlantic to NSF. PI Martin Miles
- Understanding Resilience and Long-Term Ecosystem Change in the High Arctic: Narrative-Based Analyses from Svalbard (SVALUR) to the Belmont Forum. PI René Van der Wal
- Impacts of Cimate Change on Ocean Systems and Society: Mitigation Pathways and Adaptation Options for Sustainability (OSMOSIS) to the Belmont Forum. PI Torben Koenigk
- Environmental Syntheses of Local Knowledge and Historical and Literary Documents in the Greater Mývatn Area of Iceland ca. AD 1700 to the Present (MYDOC) to RANNÍS (The Icelandic Research Fund). PI Viðar Hreinsson.
Publications
Example publications
For additional publications, see Astrid's Google Scholar profile.
Astrid E. J. Ogilvie 2019: Famines, mortality, livestock deaths and scholarship: Environmental stress in Iceland ca. 1500-1700. In Kiss, A. and Prybil, K. (eds.), The Dance of Death in Late Medieval and Renaissance Europe: Environmental Stress, Mortality and Social Response. London: Routledge, 9-24. DOI: 10.4324/9780429491085
Demaree, G. R., Astrid E. J. Ogilvie, Kusman, D. 2019: Historical records of earthquakes for Greenland and Labrador in Moravian Missionary journals. Journal of Seismology, 23(1): 123-133. DOI: 10.1007/s10950-018-9796-z
Hartman, S., Astrid E. J. Ogilvie, Ingimundarson, J. H., Dugmore, A. J., Hambrecht, G., McGovern, T. H. 2017: Medieval Iceland, Greenland, and the New Human Condition: A case study in integrated environmental humanities. Global and Planetary Change, 156: 123-139. DOI: 10.1016/j.gloplacha.2017.04.007
Martin W. Miles, Divine, D. V., Furevik, T., Jansen, E., Moros, M., Astrid E. J. Ogilvie 2014: A signal of persistent Atlantic multidecadal variability in Arctic sea ice. Geophysical Research Letters, 41(2): 463-469. DOI: 10.1002/2013GL058084
Nordli, O., Przybylak, R., Astrid E. J. Ogilvie, Isaksen, K. 2014: Long-term temperature trends and variability on Spitsbergen: The extended Svalbard Airport temperature series, 1898-2012. Polar Research, 33: 21349. DOI: 10.3402/polar.v33.21349
Teaching
Past courses
- ANTH 4: North Atlantic Peoples and Cultures
- School for International Training: Iceland and Greenland: Climate Change and the Arctic
- Summer school course for graduate students
- Univ Iceland: Society and Environment in Mývatnssveit Course
- For senior archaeology students at the University of Iceland, based on MYCHANGE and MYSEAC projects
- Svartárkot Culture-Nature Project: Human Ecology and culture at Lake Myvatn 1700-2000
- Interdisciplinary graduate course on dimensions of environmental and cultural change
- 10 ECTS: Environmental Memory and Change in Medieval Iceland
- Interdisciplinary course in the environmental humanities and social sciences with a special focus on risk and vulnerability in Iron Age and medieval Iceland
Outreach
2017: Featured in the Nature Careers Feature "Hidden in the Past," on the use of historical data for climate reconstruction. Nature, 549: 419-421. doi 10.1038/nj7672-419
2016 Polar Field story: Grass, environmental change, farming, and human ecodynamics.
2013 interview on The Bat of Minerva, Institute for Advanced Study, University of Minnesota.
2012 talk "A Brief History of Climate in Iceland," given at the 2012 Nansen conference "In Northern Mists: Understanding the Past, Predicting the Future—Icelandic and Norwegian Contributions to Arctic Research."
NORSAGA: Northern Narratives: Social and Geographical. Accounts from Norway, Iceland and Canada: PDF of a presentation on NSF-funded project.
