The unprecedented extent to which the Fourth IPY has sought to integrate the Arctic in its global human environmental context invites historians to consider the wider contribution and significance of 'Polar Year events' for the history of science. Emerging out of nineteenth century networks of scientific travel and precision measurement, the conception of these events have traditionally attempted to map the environment through attention to coordination of field sites, calibration of precision instruments, sharing of data, and the development of field disciplines. Although the history of standardisation in the field sciences is reasonably well understood, historians have yet to understand fully how IPYs have developed in response to shifting scientific priorities and research paradigms, particularly in relation to a range of researchers, citizen participants, and audiences that has become more numerous, diverse, and engaged. This session invites historians to consider how observations networks are created, built and sustained in the face of changing institutional, political, economic and social norms and circumstances. Contributors are also invited to assess to what extent the four International Polar Years have been able to succeed in integrating these events with other institutional structures for organising long-term research programmes such as learned societies, research funding strategies, collaborative approaches, and publishing houses.

Session chairs

Susan Barr 
Jorn Thiede 
Erki Tammiksaar