Advisory board

Markus Meckl holds a Ph.D. from Berlin Technical University where he studied at the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism. Since 2004, he has been working at the University of Akureyri in Iceland where is a professor at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. In recent years, one of his research interest focused on immigration issues in Iceland from which a series of articles has been published. Drawing on a broad range of experience including research at Riga University and the Latvian Academy of Culture, he is involved in immigration and integration-related projects in the Nordic and Baltic countries.

Salehin Mohammd is an Associate Professor and Academic Coordinator of the Master Degree Programme in Peace and Conflict Transformation (MPCT) at UiT-The Arctic University of Norway. Salehin holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Sydney, Australia. His research and teaching expertise include gender issues, development and non-state actors, sociology of Islam, violence and human security, and migration and refugee issues. Currently, he is researching on migration and refugee issues particularly forced migration (including the Rohingya refugees from Myanmar), policing and security politics.

Dr. Stefan Kirchner is Associate Professor of Arctic Law at the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland, and holds a dosentti (Adjunct Professor) degree in Fundamental and Human Rights from the same university. Formerly a practicing attorney in his native country, Germany, he represented clients in human rights cases at the German Federal Constitutional Court and at the European Court of Human Rights. He has taught courses on human rights and international law in Finland, Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Lithuania and Greenland. His current research interests are sustainable development and the protection of the Arctic environment through the use of modern governance tools.

Kirsi Latola has worked as a research coordinator at the Thule Institute at the University of Oulu and managed several national and international projects on Arctic research, knowledge sharing including organising several international events and graduate education. As a Director of Thematic Networks she has managed the University of the Arctic (UArctic) Thematic Networks strategic area since 2005. Kirsi is also currently acting as a chair of the European Polar Board.

Professor Jan Brzozowski is a Head of the Department of European Studies and Economic Integration at Cracow Unviersity of Economics in Poland. He was a post-doc fellow at Department of Economic and Social Sciences at Università Politecnica delle Marche in Ancona. He is also a member of the Committee for Migration Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences. He specializes in economics of international migration, including such topics as economic integration, migrant transnationalism and immigrant entrepreneurship.

Adjunct Professor, Ph.D. Elli Heikkilä is the Research Director of the Migration Institute of Finland. Her licentiate thesis (1986) and dissertation (1989) have dealt with migration and regional development. She has taken part to many international projects including migration and labour markets, multicultural marriages, unaccompanied refugee minors and urbanization. She is Adjunct Professor, specialized in population geography, to the University of Oulu, and University of Turku in Finland.

Timo Koivurova is a research professor and director of the Arctic Centre. He has a multidisciplinary specialisation in Arctic law and governance but has also conducted broader research on global law (including authoring an English-language text book on international environmental law). He has also been involved as an expert in several international processes globally and in the Arctic region.

Antti Kokkonen is Editor in Chief of Lapin Kansa since 2009. Lapin Kansa is the major daily newspaper in Lapland, the arctic region of Finland. With circulation of 34 000 the newspaper reaches the majority of the region’s inhabitants. It publishes articles in Finnish and also in North Sámi to serve the indigenous Sámi people in Lapland. Antti holds a Master of Social Sciences (M.Soc.Sc.) from the University of Helsinki (major in Sociology). He served as a member of Council for Mass Media in Finland in 2016—2019, and as Vice President 2018—2019.

Timothy Heleniak is a Senior Research Fellow at Nordregio, the Nordic Centre for Spatial Development in Stockholm, Sweden. He has a PhD in Geography and does research on migration, population change, and regional development in the Nordic region and the Arctic. He previously worked at the World Bank, UNICEF, the U.S. Census Bureau, and Georgetown University.

The main focus of Researcher Nafisa Yeasmin's studies devotes to Arctic immigration. Her research interest includes how as to understanding global migration governance in regional level, the challenges of migration governance to establish a greater coherence across the arctic region. Special attention has been given to comprehensive governance strategies for accelerating economic integration of immigrants since good governance reinforces economic integration that underpin the relative resilience of emerging economy in the global north.

Kevin Anthony Perry is the department head of social work and associate professor at the University of Greenland. Before that, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Learning and Philosophy at Aalborg University in Denmark. During this period, he researched learning, classroom wellbeing, and a sense of belonging from the perspectives of students. Kevin has a background in social work from England and Denmark and holds a Candidate in Social Work from Aalborg University and Ph.D. in Social Sciences from Roskilde University. Kevin has a varied background with experience from several sectors: British Army, factory work, taxi driving, pizza delivery, door sales, nightclub doorman and social work with children and teenagers.

Born in Lapland and a graduate of Helsinki University, Outi Snellman has been working on International Education and the development of circumpolar academic cooperation for the past 30 years first in her capacity as Educational Advisor in the Finnish Fulbright office in Helsinki (1987-1990), the Director of International Relations at the University of Lapland (1990- ) and Secretary General for the Circumpolar Universities Association (1992-1998) as well as Vice-President Organization of the University of the Arctic. Among many northern projects, she was the European leader of the first circumpolar student mobility program, the North Consortium, funded by EU and Canada, as early as 1994-1997. As Secretary General of CUA she led the feasibility study for the University of the Arctic and has been leading the UArctic International Secretariat since its establishment and is currently Head of Secretariat for the legal UArctic, the UArctic Association.

Irma Kuukasjarvi has worked as Group Communications Manager at the Lappset Group since 2008. Her position includes internal and external communications as well as marketing communications in the Group consisting of nine subsidiaries in 15 different countries and an international network of distributors extending to 60 countries worldwide. Prior to joining Lappset, she worked as Communications Manager at the University of Lapland from 1991 until 2008 leading and developing communications. During 1981 and 1991 she worked in the space industry in Kiruna, Sweden. She holds a Master’s degree (M.Sc.) in Economics & Business Administration with marketing and communications as her majors at the University of Oulu. She’s also enrolled as a PhD student at the Uni Lapland.

Satu Uusiautti, PhD, is the vice-rector and the professor of education, especially educational psychology, at the University of Lapland, Finland. Her research interests have focused on well-being and positive development and education in the Arctic and elsewhere. She has also been involved in research collaboration about migration issues and supervised research, for example, about immigrant children’s participation and education. Her latest books in the field include Human Migration in the Arctic – Facets to the Past, Present, and Future (2019, Palgrave Macmillan).