Benedikt Rakotonirina-Hess

Benedikt is an interfaculty PhD student between the Arctic Centre and the Knowledge Infrastructures department of Campus Fryslân. He is working on conservation values about artic terns (Sterna paradisea). His goal is to understand the relationship between humans and arctic terns in anthropogenic landscapes. To understand why and how arctic terns are protected, how knowledge on man-made ecosystems is produced, maintained and disseminated, and the ontological implications thereof, he combines interdisciplinary insights. Using conservation ecology, science and technology studies, and cultural geography, he brings different bodies of environmental knowledge into a productive dialogue.

This PhD project specifically focuses on arctic tern colonies in the northern Netherlands that had to be relocated due to conflicts over coastal use in the Wadden Sea. It will investigate what the relocations mean from the point of view of the terns, i.e. how they affect the behavior and populations of animal species, and investigate how and why attitudes and practices toward arctic birds and more broadly patterns of human-animal interactions change over time and space