Strategic objectives of research and artistic activity

• The University of Lapland will implement cutting-edge research on the Arctic and the North and strengthen its research focus on these regions.
   
• The Lapland Institute for Tourism Research will achieve distinguished international status in its field.
   
• Basic and applied research will be conducted side by side at the University. The applied research pursued will serve the interests of the region and support the basic research at the institution.
   
• Research at the University will be internationally networked. A significant amount of the research conducted at the institution will be funded from international sources.
   
• The University will be a nationally and internationally recognised, attractive research community.
   
• The University will engage in high-quality artistic activity within the areas central to its profile.
   
• The University’s strength will continue to lie in the interaction of research and artistic activity within each field represented at the institution.

Priorities for Research and Artistic Activity

The University’s strengths in the field of education are reflected in the Faculty of Education’s multidisciplinary work on teaching, learning, studying and mentoring as well as its contributions to media education and transdisciplinary women’s studies.

The Faculty of Law, one of three nationally, supports its broad-based educational mission through research in all of the traditional fields within the discipline as well as in the novel specialisations of Legal Linguistics, Legal Informatics and Space Law.

The Faculty of Social Sciences has a strong record in research on northern societies, social-scientific research on well-being, and broad-based scholarship in political science. Emerging strengths are research on changes in working life and communities, multidisciplinary environmental research, and applications of information technology in the social sciences.

The Faculty of Art and Design is one of the two university-level units of industrial art in Finland. Research in the Faculty concentrates on developing ecologically and culturally sustainable design, artistic activity and art education in northern environments and communities. The artistic activity of the University combines a global perspective with a focus on the North and its cultural heritage.

The University’s expertise in the area of tourism and business has centred on the social sciences and the industrial arts. Perspectives focusing on business know-how and leadership are integrated into research on tourism, the experience industry, design and media and into the administrative and social sciences. The University of Lapland is the only university in Finland offering tourism as a major subject.

The research topics pursued at the Arctic Centre encompass change in the societies and environment of northern areas, climate change and sustainable development, and environmental and minority law. Locally oriented research of international calibre is essential in political decision-making both in the Arctic and elsewhere. The Arctic Centre has set out to create a new multidisciplinary synthesis on the development of the Arctic with due consideration for using local traditional knowledge and popularising research findings.

Research in the methodological sciences at the University is geared to developing and evaluating methodology, with a particular focus on applications of information technology and the cultural history of the North in the areas relevant to the institution’s profile.