Zsuzsanna Ihar

Zsuzsanna Dominika Ihar is a PhD student in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge.

Her research on Hebridean environmental and agricultural history is supported by funding from the Gates Foundation and Wellcome Trust. Her dissertation project Armed and Arable: The Greening of a Cold-War Archipelago (1942–2022) intends to explore the role of environmental and agricultural science in the militarisation of the Hebridean archipelago—during and subsequent to the Cold War. Starting with Operation Vegetarian in the 1940s, the dissertation will examine how scientific expertise was initially mobilised to justify the construction of extensive military testing ranges, missile systems, and waste repositories. Later on, however, it will be argued that the work of geographers, ecologists, and agronomists became key to greening efforts, agro-revitalisation projects, and the attempted demilitarisation of the region. Indeed, within the context of the Cold War, the Hebridean archipelago existed as an open-air laboratory of sorts, allowing scientists, crofters, activists, and government agents to redefine concepts of value, sustainability, food security, sovereignty, as well as the very tenets of agronomy and ecology. By highlighting the ways in which environmental conservation and crop cultivation gradually folded into paradoxical projects of militarism and greening, the dissertation will hope to complicate both military and agro-environmental history.

Prior to starting her doctorate, Zsuzsanna was a knowledge management fellow at ICARDA. She holds a Bachelor of Science/Arts and a Master of Arts (Research) from the University of Sydney, majoring in Environmental Sociology. She was supervised by Prof. Sonja van Wichelen and Prof. Astrida Neimanis. 

Zsuzsanna is a member of the Decolonise HPS Working Group, the Feminist HPS Reading Group (2021-): https://hpsfeminist.wixsite.com/hpsfeminist and Learning for Purpose Co-Director, Gates Cambridge.

• Academic Merit Prize, University of Sydney (2018)

• Raewyn Connell Prize in Sociology Theory, University of Sydney (2018)

• University of Sydney Qualitative Methods Prize, University of Sydney (2017)

• Award for Academic Excellence, University of Sydney (2013)

2022. "Seeds in the Aftermath" (Collection to Cultivation I: Seeds and Sovereignty). The Agricultural History Society. Stavanger, Norway.
2022. " The Virile Crescent: Pure Seeds, Demonstration Farms, and the British Mandate's Vision to Re-Engineer Iraq." The British Society for the History of Science Annual Conference. Queen's University of Belfast. 
2022. "Turning Soldiers into Farmers: The Curative Promise of Agriculture." Part of Executive Session 'The political and ecological (dis)orders of war'. American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting. Seattle.
2022. “The Map, The Story, and the Photograph,” The Virtual Otherwise, Society for Cultural Anthropology – Society for Visual Anthropology Biennial Conference, University of Pennsylvania, Virtual. 
2022. "Seeds of War? Agricultural Expertise and the Governance of Militarised Landscapes." Gates Day of Research. University of Cambridge.

2022. "Re-ascriptions - Poetry as Epistemic Justice." 'What Does the Poem Think?' Aesthetics, Poetics and Thought. Graduate Conference. Faculty of English, University of Cambridge

2022. "In the Field? Anthropology in the 21st century." Gates Year of Engagement, Teach-a-Thon. University of Cambridge
2022. "Ghostly Oil: Spectral Storytelling within the Industrial Zone." Graduate Workshop on Environmental Multimodal Methods. UPenn/Harvard. Online. 
2021. “An Extractive Science? Complicated Industries and Crude Natures.” 4S Annual Conference. Panel: Toxic Goodness - Harmful Legacies, Hopeful Futures. Online.
2021. “Wet Air: Living within an Atmosphere of Extraction.” 4S Annual Conference. Panel: Diseased Landscapes - Health and Illness in Territories of Extraction. Online.
2021. “Multispecies Mediations in a Post-Extractive Zone (ft. discussion with Carla Freccero).” Multispecies Justice Events. Online. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qopc-1L7JLg
2021. “Drilling for a Theory: Epistemic Extraction in the Oilfields of Baku.” EnviroLab Graduate Conference (Conference Panel: ‘Patchy’ Places and Ecologies of Capitalism). University of Pennsylvania. Online. https://vimeo.com/520199280
2020. “Boundary Lines in Entangled Worlds: Fieldwork Reflections.” Gender and Cultural Studies Work-in-Progress Presentation. Online.
2020. “Post-Extractive Dreams: Reimagining Nature in the Industrial Zones of Baku.” University of Sydney SSPS HDR Event. Online.
2020. “Multispecies Mediations: Boundaries of Life in the Post-Extractive Zone.” Multispecies Justice Collective. Online. 
2020. “Pipeline Watermelons: The Convergence of Petrochemical and Agricultural Technologies in Azerbaijan.” Imperial Terroir Conference/Workshop. Melbourne.
2019. “De(naturalising) the Sovereign: The Multispecies Allies and Enemies of the Azerbaijani Nation-State.” Everyday Militarism Symposium. Sydney. 
2018. “Apocalyptic Ableism: Troubling the Discourse of Preparedness and Proactivity within Disability-Inclusive Emergency Responses.” The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) Conference. Melbourne.
2018. “Bio-Polygraphs, Nonconsensual Data, and the Suspicious Body of the Unaccompanied Minor.” 4S Sydney TRANSnational STS Conference. Sydney. 
2018. “Inside the Storm, Outside the Law: Extrajudicial Emergency Responses and the Withdrawal of Disabled Rights in the Era of Climate Change.” Narratives of Climate Change Symposium. Newcastle, Australia
2018. “Viral Posts, Viral Fears: A Biopolitical Analysis of the 'European Migrant Crisis' through Hungarian Social Media Content.” Nations in Cyberspace Conference. Budapest, Hungary. 
2018. “Weathering powers, weathered bodies: an examination of disability and ecological ableism in the era of climate change.” Australian Anthropological Society Conference. Adelaide, Australia. 
2017. “Like That Neoprene, Thick and Pliable:  Rewriting Neuropathic Pain Scales and Verbal Descriptors through the Genre of Pain Memoirs.” Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science Conference. Sydney.
2017. “Off-Tempo, On Duty: Crip Work, Non-Compliant Temporalities, and the Challenge of a Chrononormative NDIS.” Law, Literature & the Humanities Association of Australasia Conference. Melbourne.
2017. “Safety in Numbers? Algorithmic Feminism and the Use of Gender (Big) Data for Women's Health and Wellbeing.” UTS Feminists at Law - Revisiting Identity Symposium. Sydney.