research

The Arctic Centre is internationally recognized for the quality and relevance of its multidisciplinary Arctic research, which is our key activity. Through this research, the Arctic Centre promotes increased knowledge, awareness and understanding of the Arctic both within and outside the region. This research supports decision-making and sustainable development in the Arctic.

The multidisciplinary research at the Arctic Centre focuses on the interaction between man and the nature. International research is carried out in the arctic, subarctic and boreal zones.

The research builds new multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary practices between natural and social environmental research. The Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law (NIEM) carries out research in environmental law and human rights law. The Arctic Centre also provides environmental impact assessment and environmental auditing services. 

The Arctic Studies Programme serves as an introduction to issues that are relevant in the Circumpolar North.

The Arctic Centre and it's researchers are active in international networks and working groups.

The Global Change Research Group studies the impacts on increasing economic activities on the ecology, environment and societies in the Arctic. This research group focusing on natural sciences the climate change is also analyzed with the help of glaciology and mathematical modelling. Projects >>

The Sustainable Development Research Group has two research teams: Northern political economy and Northern communities, Northern possibilities. Together these two teams, focusing on social sciences, study politics of local and indigenous everyday life, as issues of identity, adaptation and resilience in the face of multiple and complex changes in the Arctic. Projects >>

The Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law carries out research in the international treaties and statutes concerning the Arctic as well as land law and environmental law relating to the Arctic indigenous peoples. Projects >>

The Anthropology research team studies how human groups across the Arctic are culturally similar or diverse, and the ways in which shared human practices, values, worldviews, institutions and economic forms lead to identification of people with groups. Themes include human-animal-environment relations, Arctic peoples and industrial development, space, landscape and mobility in the North, and oral history. Projects >>

The Arctic Governance group aims at rendering the complexity of Arctic governance more transparent and at providing policy-makers, scholars and other actors with a more holistic knowledge-base to make better informed and more responsible decisions. Projects >>

ECoHuCy project claims that the primary aim of digitalisation and cybersecurity policies should be the advancement of human wellbeing. In order to justify the claim, it scrutinises digitalisation and cybersecurity from the human security perspective.

Its empirical focus is on the European High North. The research project interacts with people and communities in the region to find out their associated needs, interests and fears. The aim is to make bottom up influence possible through knowledge production and dissemination.

In HUMANOR we are looking at the climate and non-climate drivers in human-animal relations over time scales of tens and hundreds of years. We are trying to establish whether the climate has been the most important driver of the change, or have the societal changes such as legislation and governance overruled the climate effect. Our main study areas are northern Fennoscandia, Yamal and Mongolia.

The rationale is to understand contemporary nomadic pastoralist livelihoods experiencing rapid climate and land use change by detailing their historical trajectories in contrasting socio-economic, administrative and ecological contexts.

In this project we want to find out what are the perspectives for young people’s life in Arctic Industrial Cities, and what can we do for helping to build sustainable communities for young people in such cities.

By analysing the attractiveness of Arctic industrial cities as places to live and work, the project contributes interdisciplinarily to understanding the determinants of youth wellbeing in Arctic industrial cities. We aim to find out how authorities, civil society and industrial companies provide conditions for youth wellbeing in Arctic industrial cities, and if their ideas overlap with the hopes and ambitions of the young people themselves.