PhD Student
Hanne Nielsen
PROJECT
Antarctica is unique in that is governed by the Antarctic Treaty System (ATS) and is not ‘owned’ by any one nation. Despite this, and the environmental protection built into the ATS, Antarctica has been ‘sold’ in many ways, including via stories, sponsorship, and the use of symbolic tropes.’ This project involves semiotic interpretation of advertisements that feature Antarctica, and textual analysis of advertising brochures and web text. Incisive examples from a range of time periods (Heroic Era, 1950s and today) are used to address the following questions:
• How have people used Antarctica as an end to achieve monetary goals through sponsorship?
• How is Antarctica used symbolically to sell things that have nothing to do with the place itself?
• What themes emerge from advertisements that feature Antarctica?
Gaining an understanding of how Antarctica has been ‘sold’ in various ways and used to facilitate a range of commercial transactions will provide an insight into the ways the continent has been imagined, conceptualised and represented. This in turn will help to create a better understanding of the ways Antarctica has been valued, in a variety of senses.
SUPERVISORS
Associate Professor Dr Elizabeth Leane
Dr Julia Jabour
Dr Nicolá Goc
AWARDS & GRANTS
McColl Fellowship to American Geographical Society Library
SCAR Conference Travel Grant to “Antarctic Wilderness: Perspectives from History, the Humanities and the Social Sciences” Colorado, USA, May 2015
Environment Research Group Travel Grant University of Tasmania, May 2015
First Place in APECS Online Conference “New Perspectives in the Polar Sciences”, March 2015
Elite APA PhD Scholarship to work on project entitled “Antarctica: Not For Sale? Symbolic Representations of Antarctica in Advertising Media” at the University of Tasmania. 2014-2017
social & academic profiles
PUBLICATIONS
Hanne Nielsen (2015). Staging the South: Two Contemporary Antarctic Plays The Polar Journal. Vol.5 Issue 1. pp 203-217.
D. Liggett, E. Leane, S. Chaturvedi. A. Hemmings, H. Nielsen, J. O’Reilly, J.F. Salazar, A. Shibata and G. Steel (2015) Report on the SCAR Humanities and Social Sciences Expert Group (HASSEG) WP18, Agenda Item 2.3.3 SCAR Excom Meeting 2015. Tromsø, Norway.
Elizabeth Leane, Carolyn Philpott & Hanne Nielsen (2014). Scott at the Opera: interpreting Das Opfer (1937) The Polar Journal. Vol.4 Issue 2. pp 354-376.
Hanne Nielsen and Elizabeth Leane (2013). ‘Scott of the Antarctic’ on the German Stage: Reinhard Goering’s Die Südpolexpedition des Kapitäns Scott. New Theatre Quarterly, 29, pp 278-293
Hanne Nielsen (2013). The Wide White Stage: Representations of Antarctica in Theatrical Productions (1930-2011). Masters Thesis. University of Canterbury.
Authorised by the CEO of the Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre October 2019.
The ACE CRC was established and supported under the Australian Government’s Cooperative Research Centres Program.
core participants
