Who is Who?

Svein Aamold is professor of art history at UiT - The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø. He was the leader of the international Sámi Art Research Project (SARP) from 2009 to 2017, and the main editor of SARP’s final anthology, Sámi Art and Aesthetics: Contemporary Perspectives (Aarhus University Press, 2017). The main areas of his research and publications are modern and contemporary indigenous and non-indigenous art and theory; currently with a focus on the art of the Sámi artist Synnøve Persen.

Áile Aikio (Luobbal-Sámmol-Aimo Áile by her Sámi name) is an Indigenous Sámi museum professional. Aikio has a master’s degree on Ethnology and is a Doctoral Candidate at the University of Lapland. Aikio has been curator in Sámi Museum Siida in Anár/Inari in Finland since 2005, first in Collections and since 2016 as Curator of exhibitions and museum pedagogy. At the moment Aikio is on study leave and is working with her dissertation in Kone Foundation founded project "The ontological politics of Sámi cultural heritage". In her Ph.D. Aikio studies the renewal process of the Siida main exhibition and how the Sámi way to present and represent Sámi culture is part of the exhibition process and the new exhibition. Aikio is interested in indigenizing and decolonizing processes, especially how to indigenize cultural heritage management and how cultural heritage institutions.

Charlene Alexander has worked in Canada’s North as a presenter, curator and administrator for over 30 years.  Her career began in Inuvik, Northwest Territories where she co-founded and produced the Great Northern Arts Festival from 1989 to 1998.  Since moving to Yukon in 1998, Charlene has been a leader in sector development and instrumental in establishing arts initiatives and international events including Arts Underground,  Project YFN 2010 and the Adäka Cultural Festival.  Project YFN 2010 was an unprecedented 2-year project that took 70 Yukon Indigenous artists,performers, elders and youth to the Vancouver 2010 Olympics to tell their story on the world stage through a wide range of exhibitions, performances and cultural celebrations.  Now in it’s 9th year,  the Adaka Cultural Festival is recognized internationally as an important artistic gathering for indigenous artists and a cornerstone tourism attraction for Yukon.   In 2012 Charlene brought her passion for the arts together with the growing Indigenous tourism industry and helped to establish the Yukon First Nations Culture and Tourism Association (YFNCT).   In her role as the Executive Director of YFNCT, Charlene and her team work with artists, tourism entrepreneurs, and many partners across Yukon and Canada to help grow and promote strong and sustainable culture and tourism sectors for the benefit of all Yukon communities.  The Governor General of Canada recognized Charlene for her work In the Northwest Territories in 2004 with a Meritorious Service Medal. 

Trond Ansten is a visual artist and biologist based in Tromsø, Northern Norway. He received his education from the Academy of Fine Arts in Karlsruhe (Germany), and previously studied biology and expedition guiding. With experience from public management and a strong passion for hunting, fishing and harvesting, his focus is the relation between man and nature. Ansten works with film, installation, fermentation and performance art. The expression is sculptural and performative, balancing between mysticism and science in relational art. His works are shown in galleries and film festivals such as Tokyo Photographic Art Museum, The Arctic Arts Festival (Norway), CCA gallery (Glasgow), Anthology Film Archives (New York), I-Factory (Shenzhen, China), Trænafestivalen (Norway), Delai Filmfestival (Moscow) and Alternative Film Festival (Belgrade).

Eeva Anttila works as a professor of dance pedagogy at Theatre Academy of University of the Arts Helsinki, Finland, and leads the MA program for dance pedagogy. Her research interests include dialogical and critical dance pedagogy, embodied learning, embodied knowledge, social justice and equality in arts education, as well as practice-based/artistic research methods. She has published several articles and book chapters nationally and internationally, and is actively involved in national and international dance and arts education organizations and journals. She served as the Chair of Dance and the Child International (2009–2012).

José Babin, the artistic director of the Quebec company Théâtre Incliné, creates visual theatre that merges light, music, bodies, and unanimated matter. A theatre where the spectator assembles all the different parts together.Both stage director and actress, she explores playwriting through the imagery of scenic writing, working on productions with or without words. Her artistic approach is based on stage writing that uses "matter" to express feelings. She has developed a unique manipulation style that allies mime and puppetry. In her form of theatre, part of the story being written comes from within the actors, through all of the visuals and sounds that interact with them. For Jose Babin, every new project emerges from an impulse that takes place in different inspiring territories.

Suzanne de la Barre, PhD, is a long-time Yukoner who has worked with community-based creative, cultural and tourism organizations for over 20 years. A cultural geographer and former arts and travel magazine publisher and editor (Hit the Road Press, Yukon, 1991-1995), her research and applied projects focus on the circumpolar world, economic diversification and building place resilience, arts, culture, and the possibility of community development through tourism. Suzanne teaches in the Department of Recreation and Tourism Management and the Master of Arts in Sustainable Leisure Management Program at Vancouver Island University (Canada), and the University of the Arctic’s Graduate Certificate in Northern Tourism. She is part of the leadership team of the International Polar Tourism Research Network, and coordinated their International 2018 Community Conference in Yukon (Canada) which focussed on the creative sector and tourism. She lives in Whitehorse (Yukon) and Nanaimo (British Columbia). 

Tatiana Batova is working in the Murmansk Arctic State University. She has been designer in the advertising Department of a commercial trade-holding. 2010-2015 and te curator of the creative space and art-gallery "Svetoten", Murmansk. In 2012-2015 she worked as lecturer at the branch of St. Petersburg industrial and economic College. She has expertise in Northern design, Arctic art and design, new pedagogical technologies, calligraphy and lettering, self-development, search for ways of self-realization, ethno-culture, environmental design, urbanism, lend-art, fashion design.

Ruth Beer is a Professor in the Faculty of Art and Director of ACE (Art/Culture/Environment) Research Studio at Emily Carr University of Art and Design in Vancouver, BC. She is an artist focused on research-creation and interdisciplinary approaches to artistic practice. Her production of multi-media artworks includes sculpture, video, photography, sound and weaving. She is the recipient of several public art commissions and is the principal investigator for “Trading Routes: Grease Trails, Oil Pipelines”, a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) supported research-creation project that addresses landscape and communities in relation to the interwoven terrain of traditional Aboriginal trading routes, and an ever-expanding network of oil and gas pipelines throughout British Columbia. Other projects include “The Hidden Cost of Supply Chains” (UBC) and Feminist Energy Futures (U of Alberta) with Canadian and international colleagues.

Jordan Bennett is a Mi’kmaq visual from Stephenville Crossing, Ktaqamkuk (Newfoundland). He lives and works on his ancestral territory of Mi’kma’ki in Terence Bay, Nova Scotia with his partner in life and art Amy Malbeuf.  In the past 10 years Jordan has participated in over 75 group and solo exhibitions nationally and internationally. He has been the recipient of several awards and honours most notably short listed for the 2018 Sobey Art Award, long listed for the 2016 and 2015 Sobey Art Award, a Hnatyshan Foundation REVEAL award and presented with the 2014 Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Councils Artist of the Year. Bennett holds a BFA from Sir Wilfred Grenfell College, Memorial University and an MFA from The University of British Columbia, Okanagan.

NAPA - the Nordic Institute in Greenland, is a cultural institution under the auspices of the Nordic Council of Ministers. NAPA strives to develop, support and stimulate the Greenlandic and Nordic cultural life, with an emphasis on children and youth. Mats Bjerde has been the director of NAPA since january 2014. Much of his focus has in the beginning been on the development of quality-control and transparency of the aims and goals of NAPA and ways to communicate that. He has also focused on initiating small networks in different sectors in the nordic cultural life. This is a way to stimulate and support better practices in similar activities. He has a background in the Swedish people education system (adult education) and in the cultural sector foremost in music. He has been working with many cultural exchange programs in England, Congo, India, Palestine, USA etc.

Ms Frida Blomgren was appointed as State Secretary by the King in Council on 16 February. Blomgren was first appointed as a political adviser in the Ministry of Culture in Norway on 17 January 2018.

Jan Borm is Full Professor in British Literature and Vice-President in charge of International Relations at the University of Versailles Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines (UVSQ) where he also co-directs the international interdisciplinary Masters 2 programme “Arctic Studies” affiliated with the excellence cluster “University of Paris-Saclay”. He has published widely on travel literature and Arctic travel writing in English, French and German, including a portrait of the French anthropo-geographer Jean Malaurie (Paris: editions du Chêne, 2005). He has co-edited ten collective volumes, including, most recently, Le froid. Adaptation, production, effets, représentations. Montréal : Presses de l’Université du Québec, coll. “Droit au Pôle”, 2018 and is scientific coordinator of the UVSQ team in the H2020 project EDU-ARCTIC.

Jasmina Bosnjak (NO/SER) graduated from the Fine Art Academy at the University of Novi Sad (Serbia) in 2002, and holds a masters degree from the Trondheim Academy of Fine Art, NTNU (2006). She worked as a co-ordinator at the Nordic Artists' Centre in Dale (NKD), one of Norway's largest residency centres from 2009-2012. Since 2012 she has been working as an adviser for visual arts and project manager at the Department of Culture at Troms County Council. She is a member of the Expert Committee for visual arts at Norwegian Cultural Fund, Arts Council Norway (2017-2019). She lives and works in Tromsø, Norway.

Stephen D. Borys is the Director and CEO of the Winnipeg Art Gallery where he is leading the development of a national Inuit Art Centre, the first of its kind in the world. At the core of his directorship is the goal of advancing a meaningful dialogue with the public, and creating a welcoming forum where art and culture are at the forefront with audiences and stakeholders. Dr. Borys is also an adjunct professor in the Cultural Studies department at the University of Winnipeg, and has held leadership and curatorial posts at various museums in Canada and USA. He holds an Executive MBA, a PhD in Art and Architectural History from McGill University, a MA in Art History from the University of Toronto, and a BA Honours from the University of Winnipeg. Dr. Borys has organized numerous exhibitions, written accompanying catalogues and scholarly articles, and lectured across North America and internationally. He is a past board trustee of the Association of Art Museum Directors, past president of the Canadian Art Museum Directors Organization, and past board director of the Canadian Museums Association.

Francesca Du Brock, chief curator at the Anchorage Museum, is focused on developing socially-engaged projects and exhibitions that reflect the diversity of people living in the North. Bilingualism, visual literacy, immigration, food culture, and Indigenous representation have been topics of recent exhibitions, projects and programming. Prior to joining the Anchorage Museum, Francesca worked at Kurimanzutto, a contemporary art gallery in Mexico City, and as an arts educator in San Francisco, Boston, and Alaska. She is fluent in Spanish and brings a passion for learning from, and through the arts to her current work. She holds a B.A. in Art History from Bowdoin College, a M.F.A. from the San Francisco Arts Institute, and a M.Ed. from Harvard’s Graduate School of Education.

Nivi Christensen holds a masters degree in Art History from the University of Copenhagen and has since 2015 been the Director of Nuuk Art Museum in Greenland. The focus of her research has been Greenlandic art and the representation of Greenlandic Art in Museums both in- and outside of Greenland. She has published numerous articles on this topic and is a founder of www.kunst.gl<http://www.kunst.gl/> and editor at the Greelandic Arts magazine Neriusaaq.

Silvia Colombo, art historian and museum specialist, holds a PhD in Conservation of Architectural Heritage at Politecnico di Milano, where she still is guest lecturer. After a collaboration with the University of Manchester as art consultant, she is currently working at Norrbottens Museum in Luleå (Sweden). She is also involved within the project "Swedish Lapland AiR" run by ArtNorth (Resurscentrum för konst), Luleå. Freelance editor and art critic, she writes for publishing houses and art journals.

Glen Coutts is Professor of Applied Visual Arts Education and a Docent at the University of Lapland. He studied at Glasgow School of Art and Jordanhill College of Education in Scotland. He taught art and design in secondary (high) schools for 10 years and has spent the last 25 years or so in universities, in teacher education and in community-based art and environmental education. A practising artist, he writes regularly about issues in art education. Together with Timo Jokela, he is co-editor of the Relate North series of books, the most recent of which, Practising Place: Heritage, Art and Design for Creative Communities was published by Lapland University Press in 2018. Glen Coutts is Vice-Lead of the Arctic Sustainable Arts and Design thematic network. In 2018, he became President-Elect of the International Society of Education through Art and was Past Principal Editor of the International Journal of Education through Art (2010-2016). In 2016, He was awarded the United States Society of Education through Art Ziegfeld award for outstanding international leadership in art education.

Annika Dahlsten is an Art Advisor at Development Programme for Artistic Expertise and Mediation in Arts Promotion Centre in Finland. Her work aims to expand the possibilities for artistic creativity and expertise in a sustainable way. She is a visual artist and internationally awarded animation director. Her artistic practice is interdisplinary and research-based and she uses several mediums such as photography, video, animation and printmaking. Her works have been exhibited widely both in Finland and internationally in exhibitions and festivals.

Dr. Herminia Din is professor of art education at the University of Alaska Anchorage. Since 2008, she has been advancing Junk to Funk—a community-based art series focuses on using recycled materials to create beautiful yet finished functional artwork. In 2014, she created the Winter Design Project, a collaborative learning experience connecting faculty and students to take an in-depth look at “ice” and “snow.” Presently, her work focuses on Plastic Pollution in the Arctic and using community art as an action for change. Grounded in educational theory and practice, she engages students in hands-on learning addressing a theme of global significance.

Kristoffer Dolmen is the director and curator of the Sami Centre for Contemporary Art in Karasjok, Finnmark, having worked at various art institutions in Northern Norway since 2001. With site-specific art and public art as his primary fields of interest, Dolmen worked for ten years as an art consultant for the Nordland County Council, where he was in charge of a number of major projects and programmes including public art, Artscape Nordland, AiR Nordland (residency), network of Artist in Residence sites in Nordland, and several exhibitions, conferences, and events. He has also served on various boards and sat on a number of juries within the wider field of culture. Dolmen’s education includes a master’s degree in curating, a cand. mag. degree from the University of Bergen with a focus on art history, cultural heritage, and art mediation, and studies in museology and cultural management at Stockholm University.

Kristina Dryagina is a curator, graduated from the University of Culture and Arts in St. Petersburg, she has a MA in cultural management. For two years from 2015 to 2017, Kristina was the director of the exhibition hall in Arkhangelsk. In 2016, she joined the Arctic Art Institute – an international project bureau in the Russian North, in the Euro-Arctic region of Russia, close to Scandinavia. Since 2016, Kristina is a co-curator of the Arctic Art Forum. For two years, Kristina has been working with studies of independent art organizations and initiatives in the field of contemporary art. In 2018, Kristina created a project-laboratory of movement of borders for local artists, the result of which was the performance «Living Currents». Kristina's professional interest is in the field of performance, sustainability and the study of human relations in the Arctic region.

Vladimir Durnev is a ceramic artist and a senior lecturer at the Syktyvkar State University in Russia. He is currently doing his postgraduate study at the National Taipei University of Education in Taiwan.  He has been participating in many international exhibitions, symposiums and art residencies. Since 2012, he is a member of the Union of Artists of Russia and a member of the International Association of Art (IAA AIAP UNESCO). Participant of symposiums conducted by Arctic Sustainable Art and Design network.

Varvara Feklistova is coordinator of the Karelian Art Residency, chief administrator of the Vyhod Media Center based in Petrozavodsk, Republic of Karelia,Russia. Running international exchange residency and exhibition projects. Concentrate on developing new project « Karelian art-residency network and Art tourism» supported by ENI Karelia CBC programme. The project is aimed to improve the system of production of contemporary culture services and products in cross-border region through the resources of art-residency network and cross-sectoral approach.

Marie Fol is mentoring artists of the Artists Association of Lapland (Finland). She serves as board member of On the Move, the cultural mobility information network active in Europe and beyond. Until November 2018, she managed the team Mobility & Advice at DutchCulture, centre for international cooperation. In this capacity, she was also head of the Creative Europe Desk NL. In the past, Marie was managing editor of TransArtists.org , the knowledge centre on artist-in-residence guide worldwide (2012-2016). Her areas of expertise lay in international mobility of artists and cultural professionals - including visa policies and administrative issues, as well as artist-in-residence programmes and related policies. She co-authored the operational study “Mobility Scheme for Artists and Culture Professionals in Creative Europe countries” (2019).

Alain Fournier Architect (B. Arch U McGill 1975) is a founding member of EVOQ Architecture. He has worked for over thirty five years (35) in the Canadian Arctic’s Inuit Nunangat territory (Nunavik, Nunavut and Nunatsiavut).  During this time, in collaboration with the Inuit, he has designed more than three hundred (300) buildings of all types and sizes. He has also worked with numerous First Nations of Canada, namely the Cree, the Mi'gmaq, the Maliseet, the Innu, the Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawks) and the Treaty 8 Tribal Association in British Colombia.  Mr. Fournier regularly gives lectures, conferences, participate in symposiums, summits, round tables and discussion panels in Quebec, Canada and abroad on project management, design and construction of architectural projects with the Inuit and First Nations. He also teaches and lectures on the subject in schools of architecture. He was part of the delegation that represented Canada at the Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014. The Canadian pavilion featured various approaches to Architecture the Canadian Arctic environment.  Mr. Fournier's mission is to actively contribute to the promotion and development of indigenous nations’ cultures in the built environment. As a result of this long term commitment, Alain Fournier has become a partner respected by the Inuit and First Nations and an active player in the dialog between Nations. He regularly gives lectures in Canada and abroad on the subject of how to actively contribute to the promotion and development of Canada’s rich Indigenous cultures through architecture and integrated art expressing their world vision.

Éva Freund is an environmental artist from Hungary, doctoral exchange student at University of Lapland from the University of Pécs Faculty of Arts. Her research topic is Space Poetics from a site-specific approach.

Katya García-Antón has been Director of the Office for Contemporary Art Norway (OCA) since February 2014. Katya García-Antón obtained an MA in 19th and 20th century Art History from The Courtauld Institute of Arts London. Thereafter she worked at The Courtauld Institute of Art, BBC World Service (Latin American Broadcasts), Museo Nacional Reina Sofía Madrid, ICA London, IKON Birmingham and as Director of Centre d’Art Contemporain (CAC) Genève. She is responsible for more than 70 exhibitions of art, architecture and design of practitioners world-wide presented in art institutions in Europe, as well as Latin America and the Middle East.

Gluklya’s (Natalia Pershina-Jakimanskaya) practice contests power structures in public urban space. Gluklya uses installations, performance, video, text and research to develop her concept of ‘fragility’ – a subject that should be interpreted not in the sense of ‘beauty,’ but in that of ‘invisible strength.’ In her projects, she addresses the personal stories of her characters, analysing them and revealing the conflict between political systems and a person’s inner world. Her work process is playful and her studio often turns into a meeting place where people work together on conceptualizing clothes and making other useable artistic items. Gluklya’s oeuvre speaks of indignation and hope. She makes us attentive of injustice and she proposes playful ways through which people can resist injustice. Her work points to hidden tactics that people might invent, with the help of the artist, to empower themselves and navigate through structures of repression.

Birta Gudjonsdottir (b. 1977) is a curator and artist living in Reykjavik. She is a chief curator at the National Gallery of Iceland, Reykjavik.  In 2009-2011 she had the position as director of The Living Art Museum, Reykjavik. In 2008-09 she had the position of Artistic Director of exhibition space 101 Projects, Reykjavik.  In 2008 she worked as curator´s assistant at MuHKA; Museum of Contemporary Art in Antwerp, Belgium.  In 2007-08 she took part in the Nordic Baltic Curatorial Platform project, initiated by FRAME, Finland.  In 2005-08 she worked as a curator at SAFN, Private Contemporary Art Collection, Reykjavik. Gudjonsdottir has independently curated over twenty exhibitions in Berlin, Boden, Copenhagen, Oslo, Melbourne, New York, St. Petersburg and most art museums and art spaces in Iceland. In 2011 she participated in the Curatorial Intensive program of ICI; Independent Curators International, New York. In 2011 she participated in The Cornwall Workshop, organised by Tate St. Ives. She has been on advisory boards of the Icelandic Art Center and The Icelandic Academy of the Arts. Since 2002 she has produced her home-gallery Dwarf Gallery, Reykjavik. She is a member of IKT, International Association of Curators of Contemporary Art.

Charis Gullickson was born and raised in Anchorage, Alaska. Gullickson holds an MA in art history from UiT - The Arctic University of Norway and a BA in art history from Montana State University in Bozeman. She is curator at Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum and specializes in contemporary art from the circumpolar north. She has curated several exhibitions with accompanying publications, such as 'Intersections: Aslaug M. Juliussen' (2018), 'I Craft, I Travel Light' (2017), 'Inger Johanne Grytting: Extensions' (2015), 'Sámi Stories: Art and Identity of an Arctic People' (2014), 'Tech-Stiles' (2012), 'Parallels' (2011), and 'Iver Jåks: Reconstructed' (2010). Gullickson starts a PhD - a practice-based project focusing on curatorial strategies and methods in fall of 2019.

Baldur Þórir Guðmundsson is a senior advisor at the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture in Iceland. He holds a MSc in Strategy and Management. For the last 10 years he has served in the Committee of Culture and Education in his home town of Reykjanesbær. He has taken part in setting up museums, exhibitions and shows in various magnitudes around Iceland. He is an active musician and record producer and has performed and recorded with a multitude of Icelandic musicians. As cultural advisor for the ministry he is a representative to the Iceland Symphony Orchestra and various museums and handles other diverse cultural projects. 

Sigrún Guðmundsdóttir has graduated with B.A Fine Art from Iceland Academy of the Arts. She is intermedia artist who works with photography, painting and performance. She has exhibited locally and internationally in Scotland, Poland, Turkey and Foroe Islandss. She is studying master in Art Education  and writing her thesis about outdoor teaching in the University of Lapland.

Gunvor Guttorm is a professor in duodji (Sámi arts and crafts, traditional art, applied art) at Sámi allaskuvla/Sámi University of Applied Sciences, Guovdageaidnu/Kautokeino in Norway. Currently she is rector at the same institution. Her research is interconnected with cultural expression in the Sámi and indigenous societies, especially duodji. The focus of her research deals with duodji in a contemporary setting and the indigenous people’s context. She also has had the good fortune to work with elderly duodji artisans and share their knowledge of traditional techniques. This has indeed benefited her theoretical work. In her approach, she has also tried to understand duodji of today by discussing what position and meaning it has and has had for the Sámi.

Since 2014 Zhanna Guzenko has been a culture roducer at Fridaymilk, independent curating organisation based over the Polar Circle, Murmansk (Russia) which aims to develop culture and art in the North. United by the idea of Northern identity Fridaymilk is promoting the concept of cultural decentralization by shifting the cultural centres «from capitals to remote areas». Guzenko has a wide knowledge of Barents cooperation while being an executive officer at Barents youth cooperation office in 2014-2016. Currently Zhanna Guzenko is producing Inversia, audiovisual festival in Murmansk and collective art-residency called Uncapitals.

Timo Haanpää is lecturer of Audiovisual Media Culture degree programme in the Faculty of Art and design, University of Lapland, Rovaniemi. Haanpää is filmmaker who works in different fields of film productions. Haanpää has focused especially to documentary film making but is interested to follow also a wide range of media art. Haanpää is also worked in some community art based projects.

Louise Harris has a degree in Fine Art from Oxford University and M.F.A. from Goldsmiths College. She qualified as a teacher and has been teaching and exhibiting since. Louise Harris is not a painter, a textile artist or a multimedia artist, and yet she is all these things. She is an artist first before any allegiance to any choice of media. This is because as an artist she does not see herself as the master of her medium, but rather she recognises that what she wants to achieve may only be possible through a dialogue with her chosen medium. In her textile work, which is the focus of this show, felting is always used to suggest biblical passages through the lyrical depiction of flower filled landscapes which are realised in a range of apparently fluidly gestural marks.  The images Louise creates in felt of “divine landscapes” are the result of lengthy enquiry, it might even be argued that this enquiry stretches as far back as her early childhood.

Maria Hirvi-Ijäs (b. 1962) works as Senior Researcher at the Center for Cultural Policy Research CUPORE in Helsinki. Art historian and art theorist by education her research interests focus on the dialogical relation between contemporary art and society. She has during the last three decades published extensively on contemporary visual art and cultural politics in the context of the Nordic countries.

Dr. Andreas Hoffmann is curator, writer, researcher, lecturer, currently artistic director for Arctic Culture Lab based in Kjøllefjord, Nothern Norway and Ilulissat, Greenland. Studied in Heidelberg, Salzburg and Brno. Since 1987 he curates performance- , crossover-, and contemporary art-festivals in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, Sweden, Czech Republic as well as Norway. Since 1990 guest lecture at  i.e. Charles University Prague, PennState University, State Humanitarian University Moscow, University Salzburg, Boston University, 2008-2015 advisor for UNESCO culture commission, since 2016 artistic advisor for KORO Norway, since 2018 international adviser for Anchorage Museum, Alaska, since 2019 board member of the Norwegian association of curators. Andreas holds a PhD of Arts in theses about the phenomena of Nordismo in arts, a subject he is still dedicated to with focus on questions related to indigenous knowledge.

Film commissioner Liisa Holmberg is working in International Sámi Film Institute (ISFI) in Norway.  Liisa Holmberg is  a Sámi film maker originally from Finnish side of the Saamiland.  She has worked in the film business as a producer, production manager and film consultant from the year 1994.     Big part of her work as a film commissioner is working internationally with Indigenous film makers in Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Sápmi and Russia to establish an Arctic Indigenous Film Fund (AIFF). During the years 2008-2018 Holmberg worked as a rector of the Sámi Education Institute in Inari, Finland.  The purpose of the Institute is to support Sámi languages, cultures and livelihoods. 

Hanna Horsberg Hansen is a Norwegian art historian. Currently, she holds a position as associate professor at The Academy of Arts at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. She is teaching art history and art theory, and she is responsible for the Norwegian artistic research programme at her institution. Her research has focused upon Sami art from the last forty years and the frictions between Sami art and art-history. Traditionally, art-history as a western, Eurocentric idea, have systematically marginalized and excluded art production from an indigenous people as the Sami. To write about Sami art as a modernization project or as avant-garde, rather than primitivistic, non-modern or a hybrid between tradition and modernity, create frictions between Sami art and art historical discourses. These frictions, in turn have created new understandings of Sami art.

Elina Härkönen is a Lecturer in Art Education working at the University of Lapland. She has also coordinated the international Master’s programme of Arctic Art and Design and supervised several students’ community art projects in small villages in the Finnish Lapland. Her research interest is in cultural sustainability in art educational practices.

Lásse Piera Siivvara Hartviga Iŋgá or Ingá Påve Idivuoma is from Leavdnjavuotna on the Norwegian part of Sápmi, but lives currently in Gárasavvon on the Swedish side of Sápmi. She works as an assistant professor at Sámi allaskuvla/Sami University of Applied Science in Guovdageaidnu. She also is the project leader of the Sámi allaskuvla’s part of AIDA (Arctic Indigenous Design Archives) project. Iŋgá has taken a master’s degree in Duodji (sámi handcraft) at the same university she now works in. Her master’s degree thesis was about revitalization of an extinct dress, and the identity matters connected to the tradition and dress.

Inuk (Nunatsiavut) scholar Heather Igloliorte is a research chair and associate professor at Concordia University in Montreal, Quebec. She has published extensively on Inuit and other Indigenous arts, and is the recipient of the CAA 2017 Art Journal Article of the Year Award for her essay, “Curating Inuit Qaujimajatuqangit: Inuit Knowledge in the Qallunaat Art Museum.” Heather has been an independent curator for thirteen years; her nationally-touring exhibitionSakKijâjuk: Art and Craft from Nunatsiavut(2016) received a 2017 Outstanding Achievement Award from the Canadian Museums Association. Her current projects include the co-curated exhibitions Among All These Tundras (2018-2020); the retrospective Alootook Ipellie: Walking Both Sides of an Invisible Border (2018); and the inaugural exhibitions of the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s Inuit Art Centre, opening 2020. Heather leads the SSHRC Partnership Grant "Inuit Futures in Arts Leadership: The Pilimmaksarniq / Pijariuqsarniq Project" (2018-2025). She Co-Chairs the WAG’s Indigenous Advisory Circle, serves on the Indigenous advisory committees of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, is a Faculty Council member of the Otsego Institute, and is a member of the Board of Directors for the Inuit Art Foundation, Native American Art Studies Association, and the Nunavut Film Development Corporation.

Jaimie Isaac is a Winnipeg-based curator and interdisciplinary artist, member of Sagkeeng First Nation in Treaty 1 territory of Anishinaabe and British heritage. Isaac holds a degree in Art History and an Arts and Cultural Management Certificate from the University of Winnipeg and a Masters of Arts from the University of British Columbia, with research focus on Indigenous Curatorial Praxis, and methodologies in decolonizing and Indigenizing. Recent exhibitions include Woven Together at the Kelowna Art Gallery, at the Winnipeg Art Gallery; organic, Insurgence Resurgence (co curated with Julie Nagam) and Vernon Ah Kee: cantchant, Boarder X, We Are On Treaty Land, and Quiyuktchigaewin; Making Good. Isaac co-founded of The Ephemerals Collective (with Niki Little and Jenny Western), which was long-listed for the 2017 and 2019 Sobey Art Award. Jaimie collaborated on the artistic team with KC Adams and Val Vint with on a public sculpture at the Forks called Nimama at South Point path; Niizhoziibean and collaborated on a public art project, Cyclical Motion: Indigenous Art & Placemaking curated by Jenny Western. She collaborated on the official denial (trade value in progress) a national project with Leah Decter . Jaimie has contributed articles for Art + Wonder, C Magazine, Bordercrossings, and essays for exhibition catalogues; Insurgence Resurgence, Boarder X, Close Encounters: The Next 500 Years, and unsacred, and contributed in collections of writing within The Land We Are Now: Writers and Artists Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation and Public 54: Indigenous Art: New Media and the Digital Journal. Jaimie was co-faculty for the Wood Land School at Plug In Summer Institute in 2016. She has presented research at many conferences in North America and Europe. Isaac was one of the Canada Council’s Indigenous delegation at the 2017 Venice Biennale. She is the Advisory Committee for the Winnipeg Art Gallery, Manitoba Museum and is on the board of directors for Bordercrossings Magazine.

Hanna Isaksson is Director at Resurscentrum för konst (ArtNorth - Norrbotten Contemporary Art Development Center).  Hanna is based in Luleå, Sweden, since 2016. She has previously worked as the CEO at the National Artis’t Organization and Marketing director/Producer at Havremagasinet International Art Gallery. Resurscentrum för konst works to strengthen the professional art scene in northern Sweden by creating exhibition possibilities, facilitating commissions as well as organizing education programs for contemporary artists and professional craft makers. Resurscentrum för konst is currently building a new Artist-in-Residence program called Swedish Lapland AiR that was launched in 2018.

Timo Jokela is Professor of Art Education in the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland. He is also head of University of Arctic’s thematic network on Arctic sustainable art and design. He was also a visiting professor of Art Education and Environmental Art at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland (2006–2011). He has been responsible for several international and regional action research projects in the field of art education. Jokela works actively as an environmental artist, often using natural materials and the local cultural heritage as a starting point for his works. He has realized several exhibitions, environmental art, and community art projects in Finland and abroad. Jokela has published several articles and books.

Ásthildur Jónsdóttir, Iceland has PhD from University of Iceland and Doctor of Arts from University of Lapland. MA from NYU and Med from University of Iceland. Ásthildur Jónsdóttir is an artists, researcher, curator and art teacher living in Geneva Switzerland. She has worked as a university lecturer at the Iceland Academy of the Arts, since 2009. She has studied artistic actions for sustainability, community based art and participatory art practices when finding a balance between well-being and the integrity of nature. Concepts from critical, place-based education for sustainability, participatory pedagogy, collective efficacy and places /spaces are fundamental to her research interests. 

Francis Joy is an English man living in Rovaniemi, Finland who graduated as a Doctor in the study of Sámi Religion and Art in 2018, from the University of Lapland Faculty of Art and Design. Between 2010 and 2015, Francis worked as a researcher with the Indigenous Peoples Research Team at the Arctic Centre, Rovaniemi, engaging in the study of Sámi traditional religion, cosmology, shamanism and the relationship between these practices and prehistoric rock art and the art painted on sacred Sámi drums, used by the religious specialist in Sámi culture, the Noaidi. More recently, his research has been examining the appropriation of Sámi cultural heritage into the tourism industry in Finland and the consequences of such actions for the Sámi and their culture in terms of identity theft because of failed legislation.

Aslaug Magdalena Juliussen is an artist from Northern Norway/Sápmi, educated at the Oslo Art Academy. Since 1982 she has lived and worked in Karasjok, nowadays based in Tromsø. Specializing in textile she works in a wide range and organic materials and creates large sculptures and installations. Focus is on the every day life and the potential of the material that can be explored through fragmentation and transformation. Juliussen seeks material collision as the ability to be both brutal and fragile – as well as sensual & seductive at the same time. Cultural codes in an expression that can be described as eclectic; exploratory and seeking.

Anton Kalgaev is a curator, editor, and co-founder of “Project North” think-tank. Anton graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy at Saint-Petersburg State University, and Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design (Hinterland studio, led by Rem Koolhaas). As a curator at Strelka, he worked on Institute’s public programme in 2013 and co-curated Fair Enough, award-winning exhibition in the Russian Pavilion at Venice Architecture Biennale in 2014. He published books Hypercube. Making the First Building in Skolkovo (2015) and Matrex (2016) together with architect Boris Bernaskoni. In 2018, Anton released 600-pages Age of Agglomerations — the result of international research of the economy, space and politics of the largest cities. Being interested in the development at high latitudes, Anton organized discussion sessions, participated in research projects and made reports on relevant issues.

Inka Maarika Kangasniemi is an Inari Sámi artist and designer and the mother of the AIDA-project. While working as a designer in the project, Kangasniemi has visited duojars mapping the archival materials of the Sámi artisans. During the process, she has witnessed the difficulties that the governmental organizations face when working in the indigenous context. This has led to the designing of more culturally sensitive archival services. Kangasniemi also uses the materials, collected during the project, as part of her studies at the University of Lapland.

Hanna Kanto studied art at the University of Lapland, where she graduated with a Master of Arts degree in 2007. Since then, she has mostly been living and working as an artist in the northern parts of Sweden and Finland. Kanto’s research is based on the interactions of the North and her artistic work. She opens up to the Nordic aspect through her participation in everyday life; livelihoods are a part of her work. Life in the North also clearly illustrates the conflicts between modern life style and old traditions. Her latest project is based on nature scientific research in Enontekiö, the northest part of Finnish Lapland. She is co-operating with scientist from the group called BioGeoClimate Modelling Lab which is focused on the spatial and temporal modelling of Earth systems, particularly patterns and processes concerning biogeography, geomorphology, and climatology and their interactions. She uses the researching material and results as a base of her artistic work. Her work includes painting and building installations.

Vinnie Karetak was born in Arviat, NU, and has been living in Iqaluit, NU, for the past 20 years. Karetak is an actor who preforms in film, TV and the stage. He also does work as well as a filmmaker, a drum dancer and an emcee. He is one of the owners of the production company Qanukiaq, as well as a writer, producer and actor on one of the North’s most popular shows, Qanurli. He is a member of the Qaggiavut! Society, a Nunavut Performing Artists Collective. He has appeared in the films The Grizzlies, Two Lovers and Bear and the Television show The Terror.

Ola Kellgren, b. 1957, has been the director of Nordic Culture Point in Helsinki since February 2016. Nordic Culture Point is an institution under the Nordic Council of Ministers who’s main task is running grant programs promoting cultural cooperation with the Nordics and the Nordics and Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Before moving to Helsinki Kellgren used to work as Head of Cultural Affairs in the County of Västerbotten, Sweden as well as at the ‘Västerbottens museum’ in Umeå.

Jenni Kemi works as a project planner in Lapland University of Applied Sciences. She has graduated as a Bachelor of Business Administration and a Bachelor of Hospitality Management. Her projects are mainly related to business development. She has a strong experience working with businesses in various sectors especially in tourism field. She is also working with the project called Our Stories – along the Northern Lights Route to promote the North Calotte trough region specific stories and storytelling.

Tomi Knuutila (DA) is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media at the University of Lapland. His courses include e.g history of media, animation, game design, scriptwriting, interaction design, physical computing and computational creativity. He has been working both nationally and internationally in the field of new media arts for over 20 years, including video art, cd-rom, internet-based works, music, new media performances and interactive installations in galleries, museums, science centres and media art exhibitions. He has collaborated as a media artist with other disciplines: dance, industrial design, architecture, engineering, and natural sciences such as biology and geology, e.g. ice research. He has been a founding member in international inter- and cross-disciplinary networks.

Oleg Khadartsev is a founder and creative director of Fridaymilk, artist and experimental filmmaker in Murmansk. As part of the team and in individual projects, Khadartsev tries to research and reflect about migration from the Northern regions and to find new reasons and motivation to make people stay in the North. Oleg Khadartsev has been a programming director of Inversia audiovisual festival since its beginning in 2017 as well as a creative director of Uncapitals. Recent artistic project of Khadartsev is Radioarctica, a long-term sound/visual almanac project, which explores the life of people who was born, came, stayed or returned to the North. It is a collective voice of people who live in the Northern territories, it is a general polyphonic, multilingual radio-wave about the northern people, who are courageous to stay and live in the severe conditions of Arctic.

Raija Koli is the Director of Frame Contemporary Art Finland, an advocate for Finnish contemporary art. Frame supports and promotes international projects, facilitates professional partnerships, and acts as an information centre for Finnish contemporary art. As Director of Frame, Koli is the commissioner of the Finnish Alvar Alto Pavilion in the Venice Biennale. Koli’s background is in the performing arts and urban events. Prior to her engagement at Frame, she spent five years working as Director of the Finnish Institute in London.

Samuli Kontio, herald of the local underground culture in Rovaniemi, with a long history in the field of visual arts, granted with a scholarship of Finnish Cultural fund.

Mari Keski-Korsu is a transdisciplinary artist who explores how ecological changes manifest in everyday life. The work is based on collaborations with different kinds of communities and species and usually are in the realm of hybrid combinations of performance, visual arts and live art. Her current practice for several years now, is focused on interspecies communication to possibly enable empathy towards whole ecosystems. She is interested in relations in between art, activism and science from permaculturic and ecofeminist perspectives. She collaborates with artist groups, researchers as well as organises and curates different types of projects. She was eg. one of the artists of 'Frontiers in Retreat', a 5-year international collaboration project constructed around artist residencies. In 2016, she co-directed Pixelache Festival 2016 – ‘Interfaces for Empathy' and continues to work in a think & action tank under the same name IfE. In 2020 -2022, she's artist member of an art and science team working in Access Abisko-program. She has collaborated with Bioart Society for many years and is currently the chair person of the organisation.

Korinna Korsström-Magga is Master of Arts and an art educator working in Northern Finland. Her focus of art teaching is to use the educating activity to build bridges and understanding between different communities. She started her doctoral studies in 2015. Her on-going research study, “Art-based action research presenting the daily life of the Sámi reindeer herders”, strives to find ways for the reindeer herders to inform about their contemporary life in the multicultural changing North. In her research, she seeks to develop ways and methods of art-based action research that could form a platform for a sustainable dialogue with decolonial values.

Tuomas Korkalo is a Finnish artist, painter and curator currently based in Rovaniemi, Finnish Lapland / Finland. He studied Fine Arts BA at Imatra Art School (Imatra, Finland) wherefrom he graduated in 2008. Korkalo paints, draws and creates art installations. The abstract and geometric forms that Korkalo employs on canvas are evocative of early 20th century aesthetics as seen in the Bauhaus and Russian avantgarde movement for example. Unlike the Bauhaus aesthetics, he implements water colour -like technique in his art that adds a complementary lightness to his works. In these works the geometric and colourful compositions, employed on the canvas by the artist, function by themselves, creating a comforting feeling derived from the pureness of form and symmetry. Korkalo masters both, solo and team work, and he also works widely in various international and interdisciplinary projects. He has had solo and group exhibitions in Finland and abroad since 2000. Tuomas Korkalo is a member of Finnish Painters´ Union and Artists´ Association of Lapland.

Tanya Kravtsov was born in Southern-West Siberia, Russia. Her artistic education and practice vary from visual arts to product design and ceramics. Three years ago she has moved to Rovaniemi for her Master’s Degree in Arctic Art and Design at the University of Lapland. During the studies she participated in various environmental and community art projects and workshops in Northern Finland, Norway, and Russia, which helped her to discover and learn the Arctic with its cultural, environmental and social specificities. Connection with nature, traditional handicrafts and work with natural materials are in the basis of her artistic practice.

Svetlana Kravchenko, Head of the Department for Architecture, Design and Decorative Art, Professor (Nizhnevartovsk State University, Russia), Candidate of Pedagogical Sciences (PhD), Honored Worker of Higher Education of the Russian Federation, Honored Worker of Culture of Khanty-Mansiysk Autonomous Area – Yugra, Member of the Russian Union of Artists, Member of the Russian Union of Designers. A graduate of the Faculty of Arts and Graphics of Arkalyk State Pedagogical Institute named after I. Altynsarin (Kazakhstan), Sveltana Kravchenko combines teaching, research activities and creative work, specializing in artistic weaving and textile design. As a researcher and designer, she takes an active part in various research conferences, exhibitions and competitions both at national and international levels.

Ari-Pekka Lahti is a Finnish playwright and theatre director, awarded by the State Prize for Dramatic Arts of Finland in 2012. He has an several-years-experience of international cooperations in the field of theatre. He has worked as Artistic Director of Ruska Ensemble, the theatre group doing performing art across the Arctic. During the last years he has been looking for ways to express ecological issues by performing art. The closest to his heart in the Arctic has been working together with indigenous peoples, like the Khanty, the Inuit and the Sámi. Ruska Ensemble has tried to improve cultural communication between native peoples and the majority by shared performance projects. As one of the main points of interest, he mentions stories told and documented by people themselves.

Kalle Lampela was born, lives and works in Rovaniemi, Lapland, in Northern Finland. His artistic practice is based on research and visual interpretations on social and ideological issues that include power and utopia, especially in imagery of real socialism. Lampela´s primary visualising medium is drawing. In performative drawing processes he utilises bodily gestures, gravity and rotation and uncontrollable movements of self-made inventions and power tools. In 2012 Mr. Lampela earned a Ph.D. from Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland. The doctoral dissertation addressed attitudes visual artists take toward utilizing art socially and economically, and addressed the question whether art has a socio-critical function. Kalle Lampela currently teaches and does research in the arts as a university lecturer in fine arts at the Faculty of Art and Design at the University of Lapland.

Dr. Hanna Lempinen is a university lecturer at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lapland and a visiting research fellow at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland. Lempinen’s background is in International Relations, Science Communications and Environmental Sociology. Her research interests include social and cultural sustainability and sustainable development and social and cultural dimensions of “development” and industrial activity in the circumpolar north. Lempinen’s current research focuses on Finnish peat energy production as a sociocultural concern.

From 2013 to 2018 (August), Professor of Environmental Art at Aalto University Pia Lindman received her second Master degree at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U.S.A. in 1999. After ten years of residing in New York, a professorship at Yale University School of Art, and a research fellowship at M.I.T., she now builds an eco-village in Fagervik, Finland. In 2011, Lindman was commissioned to create “Poison and Play” and exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin. Lindman’s latest art project, “Nose Ears Eyes”, was commissioned by the 32nd Sao Paulo Biennale, Incerteza Viva (2016). Starting August 2017, Lindman is doctoral candidate at Lapland University, with research-in-progress titled: The Subsensorial, Between Organisms, Consciousness, and Matter. 

Birgitta Linhart is a visual artist and workshop leader working mainly outdoors with natural material. Environmental art, stone sculpting, and as a snow/ice artist . Her base is in Luleå, northern Sweden.Most of her workshops has taken place in the arctic area of Sweden and Finland. People in rural places, nature and history of the place is of great interest to her and always the theme of workshops. In her own work she seeks the integration/interaction between nature and human. Her exhibitions has lately been in large scale nature material installations in art halls and galleries. She has participated in Land art symposiums/biennial in Trans Barents symposium of art, Ii art biennial and Silvretta in Austria. Her work in stone has been mainly of public art work and can be seen in Sundsvall, Luleå, Piteå and Haparanda. Her work as and snow/ice artist and the producer of Ice Music in Swedish Lapland has been taken place in Colorado, New Mexico, Italy and Sweden.

Anelia Lyantsevich, member of the Union of Designers of Russia, the senior lecturer, Department оf Design, Institute of Arts and Culture, Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University.

Sergei studied art and architecture history in Lomonosov Moscow State University. He works as a writer, editor, independent curator, urban and land development consultant and analyst. Sergei worked as supervisor and tutor at Thinning research studio (Strelka institute for Media, Architecture and Design), led by professor of London Architecture Association Josef Grima, and assistant professor of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts Jiang Jun. The studio focused on the complex phenomenon covering shrinking cities and specific urban environments where new architecture results in low density population. As an expert in the consortium led by French architecture firm l’AUC Sergei took part in the international competition of Greater Moscow (2012), the project was ranked among the top ten. As analyst and consultant in consulting firm KB “Strelka” (Moscow) Sergei participated in number of development projects, including developing the vision and program of the new Zaryadye park located next to the Kremlin and a foresight model for Baykalsk pulp and paper mill at Baykal lake. In 2015, in collaboration with Ivan Kuryachiy and Anton Kalgaev he established the Project North think tank focused on innovative approaches to research and development of Arctic territories. Now he is working on the Architectural guide to Arctic cities for DOM Publishers (Berlin).

Hinriikka Lindqvist is a tour manager, project coordinator and producer working in the field of performing art, now as Executive Director of Ruska Ensemble, the theatre group doing performing art across the Arctic. She has been involved in several multinational theatre projects and is experienced in international coproductions. In Ruska Ensemble she strives for improving theatre’s possibilities to act ecologically and equally in cooperation with different nations. Ruska Ensemble’s mission is to share information on environment and cultural diversity in Finland, around the Arctic area and the whole world. Hinriikka Lindqvist loves theatre art and nature and feels herself proud to be able to work among them both.

Steven Loft is a Mohawk of the Six Nations with Jewish heritage. He is currently the Director of the Creating Knowing and Sharing: The Arts and Cultures of First Nations, Inuit and Métis Peoples program with the Canada Council for the Arts. A curator, scholar, writer and media artist, in 2010 he was named Trudeau National Visiting Fellow at Ryerson University in Toronto. Loft has also held positions as Curator-In-Residence, Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada, Director/Curator of the Urban Shaman Gallery (Winnipeg); Aboriginal Curator at the Art Gallery of Hamilton and Producer and Artistic Director of the Native Indian/Inuit Photographers’ Association (Hamilton). He has curated group and solo exhibitions across Canada and internationally; written extensively for magazines, catalogues and arts publications and lectured widely in Canada and internationally. Loft co-edited the books Transference, Technology, Tradition: Aboriginal Media and New Media Art (Banff Centre Press, 2005) and Coded Territories: Indigenous Pathways in New Media (University of Calgary Press, 2014).

Inger-Marie Lupton was the producer and project manager for the Arctic Arts Summit 2017 and until handover to the Finish project group in Oktober 2018. Inger-Marie Lupton has continued the work of the main objective of the Arctic Arts Summit  now works as an international producer and consultant, to strengthen the arts and culture in the north and broadening the internasjonal perspective of the high north discourse. As an international producer of performing arts she continues to use the network that is the Arctic Arts Summit.

Joik artist Hildá Länsman from Utsjoki and musician & Helsinki-based sound designer Tuomas Norvio were asked to perform together in a festival club during contemporary theatre festival Baltic Circle 2017 in Helsinki. As it immediately clicked between the artists they decided to continue searching for their common ground. Based on improvisational soundscapes and interspaces formed by echoes and rhythms, Hilda’s ethereally buzzing, growling and pealing voice meets Norvio’s thick and sampled electronic beats.

Maarit Magga is an artist and duodji expert. She has a Master’s degree in Duodji and now she is working as Phd Candidate in Duodji in Sámi University College. She has a long experience in traditional duodji. In her recent artistic work, she has oriented to a new field in which she combines crafts and literature; she tells stories through embroidery. She has featured work in a number of exhibitions on Sàmi handcraft and culture in the Nordic countries and elsewhere in Europe. She also holds many positions of trust in the Sámi culture.

Elena Malakhatka is the Director of VR Sci Lab at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm and the founder of VR Sci Fest – the biggest in Europe festival dedicated to VR/AR application in Science. She is conducting her PhD research at KTH in the area of ‘Big data in the smart buildings’ and constantly exploring how data and information could be re-thought and represented in new ways. She writes about her research: "My research aimed to find new and sustainable business models to make sense of big data and improved energy performance of buildings. KTH Live-in-Lab will be my first big case. It will be built as a well-instrumented laboratory facility enabling collection of all kind of data concerning building performance and resident’s behavior. At the initial stage, these data can be linked to the business processes. Subsequently, it is planned to create a dynamic interconnection between the data and the business model."

Berta Morata is an architect and urbanist (UPC BarcelonaTech 2015) and current PhD student at the Luleå University of Technology. Working at the intersection of urbanization theory, geospatial analysis, design and ecology. Primarily interested in the spatiality and representation of urbanization processes, currently researching on the metabolics of urbanization in the Arctic. Parallel to research, she also runs with colleagues the project and web “Architecture Archives in the Arctic Regions”. As a practitioner, she has been working and collaborating in architectural offices within Germany, China, Japan and Switzerland.

Miia Mäkinen is Finnish visual artist who works and lives in Rovaniemi. She manages various painting techniques from traditional watercolour painting to street art painting with spray paints. In her artistic work, she can also combine craft techniques such as embroidery in her watercolour paintings. In her artwork, she wonders about current events in the Nordic region, especially Lapland, and she wants to take a stand through her art. Her colourful works of arts are dreamy reality paintings with an implication of injustice.

Mari Mäkiranta is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Lapland and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Jyväskylä. In 2008 she earned her doctoral degree related on autobiographical photography art. Between 2010-2014 she conducted a postdoctoral research project, exploring young people’s living environments in different European countries. Mäkiranta’s work has focused on socially engaged visual arts, feminist theories and arts-based research. She is a Principal Investigator in the Academy of Finland awarded Floating Peripheries – Making Sense of the Place sub-project (2017-2021). Mäkiranta is the member of board for international and national editorial boards. She has written several peer-reviewed articles and books and curated and exhibited art works in national and international contexts. She intertwines communal, embodied, experimental and multisensory expressions in her art practices.

Dëneze Nakehk’o is Dehcho and Denesuline Dene from Denendeh. He is a strong advocate for Indigenous knowledge systems, particularly Dene ways of knowing. As one of the founding members of Dene Nahjo, he works at encouraging and supporting connections/re-connections to land, language and culture. Dëneze is a public speaker that recognizes and actively confronts the impacts of colonization through Dene methods of decolonization. He has over a decades worth of experience in northern media and communications. Dëneze is originally from Łıı́dl ́ ı̨Kúę ̨́but now lives in Yellowknife.

Kresten Lune Nielsen is Head of Section at the Ministry of Culture in Denmark, where he has worked since January 2019. Mr. Lune Nielsen has previously worked at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, and his main responsibility in the Ministry of Culture is naturally international affairs. He holds a master's degree in Political Science from Aarhus University.

Per Nilsson has a PhD in Philosophy and is an Associate Professor (docent) in Philosophy: Focusing on the Philosophies of Art. He is a senior lecturer in art at Umeå Academy of Fine Art. He is the author of two books, The Amphibian Stan: An Essay Concerning Research Processes in Fine Art and Non Serviam: Philosophical Essays on Arts of Living.

Micael Norberg is an artist and the Deputy Head of Department at the Academy of Fine Arts, Umeå University. He has been teaching fine art on an Academic level since 1996. He is an experienced teacher at both basic- and advanced level with a broad knowledge within the fields of contemporary art. Educated at at the Academy of Fine Art in Trondheim, Norway, Koninklijke Academie van Beeldende Kunst in Den Haag, Holland and the Academy of Fine Arts in Umeå Sweden in early 90’s. Micael Norberg is in his artistic work exploring his close surrounding and subjects close to his person. His work and methods could be seen as documentary and his artistic work is often limited within a specific time, space and place. His artistic work has its foundation in time-based media, text and photography. Micael Norberg is based in Umeå, Sweden.

Tuuli Ojala is Senior Specialist at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland. She is Finland’s Head of Delegation to Arctic Council Working Group on Sustainable Development and served as an Adviser to the Chair of the Senior Arctic Officials during the Finnish Chairmanship of the Arctic Council 2017-19.

Aubyn O'Grady is an artist-researcher whose performative work spans from creating a feminist pro-wrestling league to assembling an amateur synchronized team that performs in lakes to examine human relationships to bodies of water. Aubyn is the Program Director of the Yukon School of Visual Arts in Dawson City, Yukon, and she is also a PhD student in the Curriculum, Teaching, and Learning program at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto. 

Lea O’Loughlin is Co-Director of Acme Studios in London, UK, and President of the Board of Res Artis, the international professional body for artist residencies. Acme supports the development and production of art by reducing the practical challenges that artists face, increasing their ability to take creative risks. By providing affordable studio and living space, residences and awards, opportunities and other support, Acme has supported over 7,000 artists at all stages of their careers since 1972. Res Artis supports over 750 member organisations in more than 80 countries. Based in Amsterdam with two satellite offices in Melbourne and Tehran Res Artis’ global reach promotes artist residencies as a vital part component of the contemporary arts and culture landscape, stimulating the creative development and mobility of artists, and furthering intercultural understanding.

Donatella De Paoli is Associate Professor at the Department of Leadership and Organisation at the Norwegian Business School BI in Oslo. Her research interests are about the aesthetics of organizations and the organizing of the arts. She has written books and published scientifically about these issues. Currently her main research interests are about leadership in virtual space, physicality of leadership, leadership images in architecture and the construction of leadership through spaces and places. She is teaching at several Executive Masters programs in leadership, has developed the field of Arts Management and gives regularly speeches in business.

Anastasia Patsey is a curator based in St. Petersburg, Russia and working internationally. She graduated from the St. Petersburg Stieglitz Art Academy and holds a dual MA in curatorial studies of the St. Petersburg State University and the Bard College NY. Since 2012 she is a permanent member of the curatorial team at the “Pushkinskaya-10”— Russia’s oldest non-governmental artist-run institution (f. 1989). Anastasia Patsey is co-founder and head of the St. Petersburg Art Residency. Since 2015 she also holds the directorial position at the Museum of nonconformist art. Besides her institutional practice she works as an independent curator and is regularly invited as a guest lecturer by universities and educational programs. Her academic research is dedicated to art residencies, cultural mobility and modern nomadism.

Taqralik Partridge is a writer, spoken word poet and curator originally from Kuujjuaq, NU now living in Kautokeino, Norway. Her performance work has been featured on CBC radio one and her writing has been reproduced in Swedish and French language translations. In 2018 she was co-curator of the exhibition Tunirrusiangit: Kenojuak Ashevak and Tim Pitsiulak at the Art Gallery of Ontario. Her short story Igloolik, published in Maisonneuve magazine, won first prize in the 2010 Quebec Writing Competition and has been published in Swedish and French. She is currently Editor-at-Large of the Inuit Art Quarterly and will be a featured artist at the 22nd Biennale of Sydney in 2020.

Petteri Putkinen is one of the founders and the CEO of Artorio Ltd. Artorio designs and produces digital platforms for arts and culture organisations. Artorio's goal is to create new channels for art to be found. Before Artorio Petteri worked over six years as a regional artist in the Arts Promotion Center of Finland TAIKE. During TAIKE he combined his experience in digital design with his growing knowledge of artists’ profession. That started many of the ideas of the products that Artorio is now developing. Petteri has also a long career on the digital concept design and 3D graphics studios. He is specialized in re-thinking possibilities of digital tools while keeping the true value of art in the focus. Artorio’s clients include Amos Rex, Union of Finnish Art Associations, The Artists' Association of Finland and major public art projects.

Tarja Porsanger comes from Utsjoki, 450 kilometers north of here. Her father was a reindeer herder and my mother a craftswoman. She have worked all my life within the Sámi culture; for various cultural projects, and 10 years as director of the Cultural Department at the Sámi Council . Now she works as a coordinator for the Sámi Parliament in the Indigenous Film Center, and also in the Year of Indigenous Languages -project. She have a passion for visual arts, and she has studied photography at the University of Lapland. She has had a photo exhibition on the perception of beauty through the eyes of the citysámi. The subject of the exhibition came from the co-operation of the Skábmagovat- and Imagine Native -film festivals.

Anastasia is musician, performer, visual director and screenwriter for action and documentary movies, as well an international model. She is engaged in the synthesis of video and sound, working on she’s artistic projects, explores the stories of the post-Soviet musical culture, folk culture of the northern lands, musical history and culture of the Russian orthodox church. Stasya finds her entrance in interaction with nature, social relationships and people in general.  In 2015 she organized her musical group „Север 2046“ (North of 2046, hello, the Future!), studying and exploring the phenomenon of Russian pop music, the new Russian wave and culture of the late 80s — early 90s, folk music, fairy tales and legends of the northern lands of Russia and Lithuania (especially inspired section of the Curonian Spit on the Baltic Sea). She was recorded the first album (North 2046 — Play and Cry), currently continuing work on the project and is preparing to release a new album, which should appear on December 2, 2018. In 2017, she joined as an art director for audio in the Moscow video production Sudba Moscow, in April 2018, together with the team of Sudba Moscow she went to the art-residence of Traena, Norway, where she recorded and synthesized the sounds of nature, wrote music on analog instruments and conducted her musical research for a documentary movie about Traena, which is due out in September 2018.

Saila-Inkeri Puukko works as a project manager in Lapland University of Applied Sciences. Saila holds M.Ed. on Adult Education from University of Lapland. She also holds a teacher`s pedagogical qualification from Oulu University of Applied Sciences. Saila has long expertise on international project management in the higher education industry. She is skilled in management of international networks, developing project in the fields of business, marketing and arts & design. Now she coordinates the international “Our Stories –along the Northern Lights Route” project (Interreg Nord) to promote the North Calotte through region specific stories and storytelling.

Maria Ragnestam is a curator and the Artistic Director for Konstmuseet i Norr. Since 2011 she has been running the project to actualise an art museum in Kiruna, which opened in November 2018. Ragnestam is a board member of Statens kulturråd (The Swedish Arts Council) for image and form. She has worked as head of jury for Konstens väg in Övertorneå to procure public art, written a monthly column about art for the regional press and has produced numerous texts for different publications. Reoccurring themes that interest Ragnestam in her work is gender questions and native people.

Piia Rantala-Korhonen works as director and Advisor to the Mayor in city of Oulu, responsible for International Affairs and the bidding office of Oulu2026 European Capital of Culture. She has worked with art and culture in many organizations on national and international level, for ex. as Executive Chair of National Arts Committee and as Secretary General of Artists Association of Finland. Rantala-Korhonen was born in Helsinki 1962; she works and lives now in Oulu, Finland. She holds a Master of Science degree from the University of Helsinki. She has made postgraduate studies in Governance, Leadership and Management.

Javier Rodriguez is an artist based between London and Sweden. He founded Standart Thinking in London,a collaborative project rooted in action research and education set within a social- ecological framework. The project seeks to provide a meeting place for the integration of practices and skill sharing between artists, designers, food producers, scientists and the broad community. Rodriguez considers a key issue the need to contextualise the discourse around conservation, heritage and cultural development using contemporary means of communication and action in order to reach a wider audience and attract active participation to ensure a sustainable approach for the preservation of cultural and natural assets. His experience and intentions are now focused with his work at Northern Sustainable Futures, an independent organisation in its germination period located in the region of Norrbotten, driven by the long term ambition to activate an enabling ecosystem for cultural and sustainable development in the nordic context.

Johanna Ruotsalainen is senior lecturer in Oulu UAS, composer and visual artist. Ruotsalainen has participated in many internationally established festivals as invited artist and has collaborated with some of the most acclaimed contemporary performers such as Mise-En Ensemble, ToolBox Percussion, Open Circuit and David & Oliver Herbert. Ruotsalainen has special interest in place and locality: Her works illustrate the complex phenomenon of place with aim to capture the atmosphere and emotional essence of the experience.

Simi Susanna Ruotsalainen (MA) is media-artist and photographer from Rovaniemi, Finland. Their main medium is video art, especially combining photography with drawn animation. Written or spoken words and several simultanious interpretations interest them as the source of audiovisual expression. Ruotsalainen's art is often related in Northern and Arctic areas, environmental issues and feminism. Ruotsalainen is currently finishing their second Master's degree in University of Lapland.

Also known as the performance artist Maire Karuvuori, Marika Räty works as a performance art representative coordinator and advisor (läänintaiteilija) for a governmental bureau, Arts Promotion Centre Finland (Taike). The core of her work is to enhance the working conditions and opportunities for professional Finnish performance artists and the most prominent personal guideline to her work is to implement feminist thinking, sustainability, equality and accessibility in all her processes. Räty most often builds her work projects around bringing people together and helping them communicate together. Outside her work at Taike she has been hosting and moderating seminars, talks and galas for the national Dance network, arts associations and the university of Lapland. Also her artistic work often revolves around talking, listening, learning and teaching. She is a part of the feminist Performance duo Horonkäristys.

Tapani Saraste is a visual artist currently studying art education at the University of Lapland and based in Rovaniemi, Finland. These days, he is way too into theory and studies to get any art done, though he likes to dabble in crafts and is also probably some kind of wizard. Tapani is currently interested in tabletop role-playing games as artwork, finishing his comic project, improvisation as practice, getting back to painting on linen instead of a MDF board, some more embroidery, student-centred art education, physicality and the use of space, art as research, the terror behind feeble social constructs, the sun and grass.

Outi Snellman, Vice-President, Organization, University of the Arctic and Director of International Relations, University of Lapland, Finland Outi Snellman has been working on International Education and the development of cooperation in higher education in the Circumpolar Region for the past 20 years in her capacity as 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 Administration 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. As Secretary General of CUA she led the feasibility study for the University of the Arctic and has been the head of the UArctic International Secretariat since its establishment. In the recent years she has been highly active in enhancing higher education collaboration between the circumpolar north and non-Arctic countries like China and Japan in the context of UArctic's Thematic Networks as well as bilateral academic collaboration between Finland and non-Arctic countries.

Amund Sjølie Sveen is born in Vadsø, in the far north eastern corner of Norway. Has a master in solo percussion from Göteborg College of Music, Sweden. Is working with a wide range of expressions and medias which common ground mainly is the use of sound, and the investigation of current political issues in the globalized world of free market economy. The last five years he has dedicated most of his time to a mobile peoples assembly, discussing issues of money, power and identity all over the North. He is also affiliated with the Arctic University of Tromsø as an artistic researcher.

Aura Seikkula is a curator and researcher based in Helsinki. Seikkula is currently working at the Arts Promotion Centre Finland with the Development Program for Artistic Expertise and Mediation. Using epistemological analysis as her tool, Seikkula’s recent PhD research in philosophy discusses the potential of Intellectual Sustainability. Seikkula has worked in curatorial and advisory positions and curated exhibitions and events in 20 countries, and on six continents. Some of the positions include Kulturhuset Stadsteatern and Artipelag Konsthall, Stockholm as well as Künstlerhaus Bethaninen, Berlin and the Finnish Museum of Photography, Helsinki. She is the co-founder of the Curatorial Program for Research and SKY Curators Union Finland and contributes to various international art publications.

Ragnheiður Skúladóttir was born in Reykjavík. She finished her BA in theatre and multimedia at the University of Iowa in 1991 and her MFA at the University of Minnesota in 1996. Following her studies she moved to New York City where she lived and worked until 2000 when after a 13 year stint in the U.S, she moved back to Reykjavík to take on the position of Dean of Department of Performing Arts at then newly founded Iceland Academy of the Arts. Ragnheiður worked at IAA until 2011, initiating new programs in performance making and contemporary dance. In 2008 she co-founded LÓKAL International Theatre Festival, an annual event presenting new local and international work in the field of theatre and performance. She was artistic director of the Akureyri City Theatre 2012 to 2015 and manager of Iceland Dance Company 2016-2019. In August 2019 she will take on the artistic direction of Festspillene i Nord-Norge. Ragnheiður has years of experience as teacher and mentor and has worked with various artists/ groups as a producer.

Marita Isobel Solberg is a chanter, a musician and a visual artist, working mainly with sound, performance art and installation. An artist with sámi and kven heritage originally from Manndalen in North-Troms, Norway. In addition to her master's degree from Oslo National Academy of the Arts (2007), she has been singing and exploring different musical genres ever since childhood. She has a base in Tromsø, Norway, but lives a nomadic life on the Norwegian and international art and music scene. Over the years, she has done performances and residencies in places like The Watermill Center in New York, Art / Life Institute in NY, The Performance Studio in London, the Arctic Hideaway in Fleinvær, Shigaraki Ceramic Sculptural Park in Shiga and Pushkinskaya in St. Petersburg. With her strong connection with the northern Norwegian part of the country, she has exhibited at BarentsSpektakel and The Arctic Arts Festival and has been in charge of the fictional Sámi Daiddamusea in the award-winning museum performance at Nordnorsk Kunstmuseum in 2017. 

George Steinmann is a visual artist and musician based in Berne, Switzerland. He studied Painting, Sound and Afro-American History in Berne, Basel and San Francisco, and lived in Finland 1970-1975. His artistic practice is research oriented and involves fieldwork where he investigates Climate Change, Biodiversity and the Ecologies of Forests and Water. A special focus is on the relationship of Art, Science and Indigenous Knowledge. He has been conducting transdisciplinary projects and multimedia exhibitions since 1979. In 2011, he received Doctor Honoris Cause from the philosophical-historical faculty of the University of Berne. Since many years he has also lecturer in Europe, USA and Asia on the interconnectedness of Art - Culture and Sustainability.

Anniina Suominen is a Professor of Art Pedagogy at Aalto University and the Head of Education for the Department of Art. She earned her BA/MA from the University of Arts and Design Helsinki (1999) and her Ph.D. in Art Education from The Ohio State University (2003). Her current publications and presentations focus on marginalized and crisis areas arts education, environmental concerns, feminism and queer in art education pedagogy and policy, animal and immigrant rights as part of contemporary democratic societies and visual/artistic knowing, learning, and research..

Magne Svineng, Sámi from the Norwegian side of Sápmi. Hes has born in Karasjok and grown up on a small farm just outside Karasjok and still living there, but has no animals on the farm today. He has been employed at the Sami Parliament in Karasjok since 2010, where his role is to be the Head of administration at the department for cultural, industry and health. The cultural section in this department has the responsibility for artand cultural development among the Sámi people and societies on the Norwegian side, including art- and cultural institutions like Sámi theatres, museums, festivals and other cultural institutions. Sami artists can also apply for funding from the Sami parliament, for example for music-, literature-, film- and similar projects.

Elina Söderström is a landscspe architect, MsC (graduated from SLU Alnarp in Sweden),an artist and an entrepreneur from Tornio, Finland. She and her husband Esa Rautiainen have a company called Studio E-City, specializing in music, landscape architecture and tourism, with owning and running a B&B in Tornio. They are also members of VisaNordica, a music group. Studio E-City is one of the partners in a project called "Our Stories - along the Northern Lights Route". Elina is one of the project managers and also a musician in "Our Stories". This project aims to promote the North Calotte- region through stories and storytelling with words, art. film and music collected and created along the river Tornio and the Northern Lights Route.

Ivan Tarasov is a sociologist. In 2015, he graduated from Nord University (Bodo, Norway) with his second degree as a Bachelor in circumpolar studies. In 2018, he completed his postgraduate studies at training program “Social institutes, social phenomenon and processes” on the topic “Structures and typologies of the Arctic circumpolar cities. His research interests include Sociology of cities, Urban Studies, Arctic Studies and Civil society in Russia. Ivan is an organizer and initiator of some workshops and round table conferences on contemporary processes in Arctic cities, such as Free seminars of urban studies. Participant of conferences and scientific schools, including Arctic Frontiers 2018, BASEES 2019, Barents Summer School 2016. He has taken part in several applied research projects. The title of his current research is «Urban environment as a non-single object: features of the assembly» supported by Oxford Russia Fund. 

Tarralik Duffy is an artist, jeweller and writer from Salliq (Coral Harbour), NU currently based in Saskatoon, SK. Working primarily in design, she uses natural materials to make jewellery that has been exhibited across Canada and Europe, including at Paris Fashion Week in Spring 2019. She also designs and creates textiles, clothing and accessories for her label Ugly Fish. She has travelled across Canada exhibiting and selling her work including shows at the Winnipeg Art Gallery in Winnipeg, MB and the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, ON. As a writer, Duffy contributed the Feature story "Uvanga/Self: Picturing Our Identity" on self-portraiture for the Fall 2018 issue of the Inuit Art Quarterly and is a contributor to the upcoming catalogue for the exhibition Itee Pootoogook Hymns to the Silence published by the McMichael Canadian Art Collection.

Monica Tennberg is a research professor at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, Finland, and the leader of the Northern political economy research group. She is a political scientist and has worked with arctic issues, such as international environmental cooperation, politics of climate change adaptation, and everyday political economy and resilience in the Arctic, since late 1980s. She has recently finished a book project “Resources, social and cultural sustainabilities in the Arctic” (Tennberg, Lempinen and Pirnes, eds., Routledge, forthcoming) with her research team at the Arctic centre.

Jerri Thrasher is an Inuvialuit Film Writer/Director, Television Producer and owner of JT Productions in Inuvik, Northwest Territories.  In 2013, Jerri joined the Inuvialuit Communications Society, as a TV Producer eventually producing Tusaayaksat Tv, I Survived North of 60 and Inuit Away for APTN. Outside of Television, Jerri spends her time writing and directing short films set in the Arctic such as The Last Walk and her upcoming Seacrets. In October 2018, Jerri joined a Greenlandic Production team as a co-producer for the upcoming short film Updated. Today, Jerri is an advocate for Inuvialuit and Food-Security in the north and is using these experiences to write a feature length based in her home region.

Antti Stöckell lives in Rovaniemi and works as a lecturer at the University of Lapland on the Faculty of Art and Design. He graduated as an artist with a specialisation in sculpting and teaching art. He has also studied to be a nature and wilderness guide. In his artistic work, he focuses on working in nature and on the fields of environmental art and community art.

Kirsi Suomi is a Coordinator in Culturally Responsible Sámi Tourism -project at the Sámi Parliament in Finland, the representative self-government body of the Sámi in Finland. The rapid growth of tourism has increased challenges to cultural sustainability, especially in the context of Sámi culture. The project’s main goal has been to create ethical guidelines for Sámi tourism to address these challenges. As a result, the Sámi Parliament in Finland approved Principles for Responsible and Ethically Sustainable Sámi Tourism in September 2018. The main aim of these guidelines is to terminate tourism exploiting Sámi culture and, instead, to distribute correct information about the Sámi through tourism based on the Sámi culture. The guidelines also aim at safeguarding the vitality of the Sámi community and Sámi culture for the future generations. Kirsi has a BSc in Anthropology from University College London and MA in Social Sciences from Helsinki University

Anniina Turunen is a teacher in duodji (Sámi Arts and Crafts) at the Sámi Education Institute. She graduated in 2017 at the University of Lapland majoring in textiles and design. In her Master’s thesis she studied “silki”, a scarf worn by Sámi women in her region. Anniina’s heart is in duodji. She finds duodji as the language between past and future generations both in her educational work and in her artistic work. Duodji isn’t just beautiful handmade items, it’s a way of life and survival, part of locality and a whole. Currently besides teaching Anniina Turunen is focusing on making duodji including an artistic approach to the issues her culture is facing.

Svetlana Usenyuk-Kravchuk is a design researcher with primary interests in the Arctic design, i.e. design for adaptation to the extreme environment, with focus on co-design and user innovation practices, made visible and comprehensible through design ethnography. She has pursued these interests to date by conducting fieldwork and user innovation research in different localities of the Russian and Scandinavian North. She graduated as a PhD in 2011 from the Ural State University of Architecture and Art (USUAA), Russia, then worked as a postdoc at Aalto University, Finland (2011-2015), and at the Ural Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences (2015-2016). Currently, she is Assistant Professor at the Department of Industrial Design and a Head of the research lab on innovation and creativity at the USUAA.

Maria Utsi is the director of the Arctic Arts Festival in Harstad, Norway. With strong profiles of northern arts and culture, the festival annually produces and presents innovative and collaborative projects from all over the high north. Maria Utsi has worked across the Arctic to promote arts and culture as a key factor in the development of the high north. She has a broad network across the Arctic countries, and was a driving force behind the first Arctic Arts Summit, in Harstad, Norway. Utsi is a member of the Norwegian Arts Council. She studied theatre science at the University of Bergen.

Ingrid Valan holds an MA in Art History with contemporary art as specialized field, from the University in Oslo and Goldsmiths, University College of London. After graduating in 2013, Ingrid has worked as an art educator at the Astrup Fearnley Museum, the Vigeland Museum and Høstutstillingen in Oslo. Ingrid has written and published texts about contemporary art, among others for the Norwegian art magazine Kunstforum, and worked at several of the popup exhibitions of the Oslo based art dealer and consultant company, ArtWalk. Since June 2014, Ingrid has been part of the Pikene på Broen´s team in Kirkenes, working as a curator. Pikene på Broen is an organisation with idealist roots that has developed to be one of the most important cultural actors in the Barents Region; developing projects such as the multilateral Interreg Kolarctic project 'Migration' in 2002, since 2004 the annual art and culture festival 'Barents Spektakel' and the international residency programme 'BAR International' and three 'Barents Triennale' (EU cultural projects). In 2017, Pikene på Broen established the project, workshop and dialogue space 'Terminal B' in the centre of Kirkenes.

Soile Veijola is Professor of Cultural Studies of Tourism at University of Lapland, in Rovaniemi, Finland. Her merits are almost forty years of active engagement in international Tourism Academia. Her Phd in sociology at the University of Helsinki in the 90s dealt with mobile subjects and situated knowledges in tourism, mixed team play, and sociological narration. Since then she has explored e.g. tourism as work, the tourist dwelling, silence in tourism, slow methodologies of co-writing, gender in the Coding Society, and future initiatives in tourism based on “undressed places of the global north”. She has a strong orientation to ethical guidelines and sustainable mobilities in academic collaboration, and a special interest in accessible and systematic design of academic theses. Her co-authored publications include e.g. The Body in Tourism (1994),  Mobile Neighboring (2016), Disruptive Tourism and Its Untidy Guests. Alternative Ontologies for Future Hospitalities (Palgrave 2014), and Matkasanakirja hiljaisuuteen [A Travel Dictionary into Silence] (2018). At the current moment, she leads a team that focuses on multidisciplinary measurements of the impacts of sustainably growing tourism in cultural environments (MAMOMI www.ulapland.fi/mamomi, VNK).

Lena Ylipää is an artist based in Lainio and Boden in Norrbotten county. Since graduating from The University of Arts, Craft and Design in Stockholm in 1996, Ylipää has, besides her artistic practice, engaged in cultural policy through artists-organisations and associations. Ylipää just finished a five-years assignment as a coordinator in visual arts at the County council in Norrbotten. In that assignment her focus was om development of infrastructur and support to associations and other actors within the art-field in Norrboten. Ylipää has a large interrest in social structures, especially the development and transformation that is ongoing in the northern region. She has an extra interrest in questions that concern attitudes and norms on concepts as centre and periphery, regional and cultural boundarys and how this has an impact om daily life as well as the art-scene. Ylipää is a member of the artist-group Koncentrat that has its residence in Kiruna. In her artistic practice she investigates topics that are ”close to home” through a wide range of media.

Dr. Courtnie Wolfgang is an assistant professor in the Department of Art Education at Virginia Commonwealth University (USA) and a member of the VCU Open Minds faculty. Her research and teaching foci include intersections of anti-racist, post/feminist, and queer theories with arts pedagogies; community-engaged pedagogies; and justice-oriented Arts Education practices. Recent publication sites include Visual Arts Research, Studies in Art Education, The Journal of Social Theory in Art Education, Art Education, and the Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education. Her chapter "Teacher preparation during an epidemic of mass incarceration: The challenge and hope of arts and education" appears in Critical Articulations of Hope from the Margins of Art Education (2019) edited by Eeva Anttila and Anniina Suominen. Recent and ongoing projects include collaborative arts-based workshops with adolescent girls in juvenile arbitration, development of arts courses for incarcerated adults at the city jail in Richmond, Virginia, the Performing Statistics curriculum, The Service of Art Ed, and Queering Art Ed.

Tatiana Zhigaltsova is a researcher, and a photographer. She has a PhD thesis in Philosophy (2012) and worked at the Northern Arctic Federal University. At present, she is a Senior Research Officer at the N. Laverov Federal Center for Integrated Arctic Research, Russian Academy of Sciences. Her interests include history and routine life of small settlements in the Arctic, emotional geography and mapping of environment. Together with the video-artist Sergey Zhigaltsov, she co-authored an art project “Emotional Geography of the City” (2018). Her projects at the junction of art and science are based on her 2014-2019 field visits to the cities and rural communities of the Russian North and aim to improve emotional ecology and emotional bonds between people and their places of residence.

Beatrice Deer has released five albums, each deepening her trademark blend of traditional Inuit throat-singing with contemporary indie rock. My All to You, her fifth record, marks a significant milestone in the history of Inuindie music (a genre Deer pioneered), as this is the first time she composed all the songs’ instrumentation and lyrics. Themes ranging from classical Inuit legends to the importance of finding understanding and the search for meaning within personal growth. Her songs are especially beloved in Arctic Canada, where she tours frequently and where audiences sing along to her songs. She sings in three languages: Inuktitut, English, and French.

Ivan is a founding partner of Novaya Zemlya urban research and planning company. One of the major projects ongoing is a Human Development Index of Russian regional cities — based on UN Habitat methodology and adapted to Russian municipal statistics. As a research fellow at Faculty of Urban and Regional Development of Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Ivan engaged in research and academic activities related to sustainable development of shrinking cities and strategic planning of urban metropolitan areas. In collaboration with Sergei Kulikov and Anton Kalgaev he operates Project North think tank focused on research and development of Arctic territories. Project North took part in Nordkalottsymposiet in Kirkenes, Intercult project in Archangelsk, Arctic-related events in Tromse, Saint Petersburg, and Nikel.

Sardana Savvina (indigenous/Sakha). Savvina is born in the village Verkhnevilyusk in Western Yakutia, The Republic Sakha, Russia. She is producer, promoter of Sakha cinema and researcher in film studies. Savina is the founder and leader of the "Sakha Cinema Club" – Yakutia's Independent Filmmakers' Community. Savvina has promoted and distributed many indigenous Sakha films at different international film festivals. For 13 years she worked at the Arctic State Institute of Culture & Arts as a lecturer and the head of International Office. She has worked as programmer of four editions of Yakutsk International Film Festival (2013, 2014, 2015, 2016). She is thea dvisor of NATIVe Section of the Berlinale IFF and coordinator of Special Program in Focus - "Sakha Cinema: World of Magical Nature and Myths" (Busan IFF, 2017, Korea). Currently she works as a producer at National Company “Sakhafilm” and at the International Department at ‘Olonkho’ Ethnic Theater.

Elina Waage Mikalsen is an artist and musician from Tromsø, currently resident in Oslo. In 2015 she was nominated for the Young Artists of the Year at the Indigenous Festival Riddu Riđđu. The spring of 2017 she completed her bachelor in contemporary art at Nordland Art and Film Collage, under the Academy of Fine Arts in Tromsø. She has since then worked independently as an artist, exhibited and taken part of discourses related to the indigenous art-scene and curating practices. 

Sandra Márjá West is the festival director of Riddu Riđđu, an international indigenous peoples’ festival, which is held every year in July in the coastal Sámi area of Gáivuotna/Kåfjord in Northern Norway. West is a duojár/artist of traditional Sámi handicraft and a goldsmith. Riddu Riđđu has a wide programme with concerts, workshops, debates, films, theatre, dance and art exhibitions, and welcomes 7000 visitors annually. The festival was started by coastal Sámi youth in 1991 as a revolt against the shame and suppression of Sámi culture and has built pride for indigenous cultures through 28 years. This year’s lineup includes Buffy Sainte-Marie, Tanya Tagaq, Maxida Märak, ISÁK, Wiyaala, Jeremy Dutcher, Silla and Rise and Slincraze.

Irina Zemtsova, professor, folk master of the Russian Artists Union, Department of Folk Arts and Crafts, Institute of Arts and Culture, Pitirim Sorokin Syktyvkar State University.

Katia Zatuliveter, Russian social entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Altourism, expert in community building and rural development.