Born in Arkhangelsk, Anastasia’s background has long focused on social issues, since she received her first diploma of higher education in Social Work from Pomor State University before she decided to proceed to the MA in Circumpolar Health and Well-being.

Anastasia’s inEmelyanova 1terest in health and social issues in the north can be related to her life – she has lived, lives and will live in the North, and is planning on pursuing a PhD in the wellbeing of the elderly, and adjusting policies of northern states in the conditions of growing number of senior citizens.

She regards the master’s program as utterly valuable for the improvement of life in the North, because its aim is to educate and prepare new specialists dealing with health and social problems related to alcohol-abuse, domestic violence or also changes occurring due to the changes in the climate – also in particular for the Arctic indigenous peoples.  

Anastasia states that the courses are “brilliant because they included a development of the critical consciousness, critical feedbacks to the events happening with health within the Circumpolar Area. It wasn’t easy, no, I wasn’t always satisfied with the results of my work, was sometimes frustrated by the complicacy of assignments, but the work was worth of being fulfilled, it opened to me new perspectives and interdisciplinary visions. Now I greatly miss that time!” Since she was born in the North and is well familiar with the problems at hand, she can state that the courses of the program correspond to the problems the north faces, though they also include issues not directly relevant for the region but good for comparatative reasons (e.g. Australian perspectives).

Anastasia is confident that the increasing number of students of the Master’s program will apply their knowledge in the Northern communities, so that in the long-run positive influences of the program will be visible throughout the Circumpolar North, also due to the application of already existing circumpolar knowledge of the students in other activities and projects.

The MCH master’s program was established under UArctic’s TN on Arctic Medicine and is maintained by the University of Oulu, Finland (coordinator), University of Southern Denmark, Denmark/Center for Health Education, Greenland, Luleå University of Technology, Sweden,  Northern State Medical University, Russia, Pomor State University, Russia, University of Lapland, Finland and UniversitEmelyanova 3y of Manitoba, Canada.

The collaborative structure of the program enabled the students “to broaden professional contacts through the set of international courses and conferences where have chance to meet representatives of international networks of circumpolar/arctic research, members of universities related to circumpolar studies, committee representatives and other leaders in the sphere. It might allow joining their projects and taking another step in working for the wellbeing of the circumpolar society”, as Anastasia says. It furthermore enables the program to focus in the individual study preferences of each students, and therefore to contribute to a broadening of the horizon and improved levels of cooperation with other students and experts.

Anastasia describes the study environment as “mixed”, primarily built on distant-learning (online) basis, while on-site study e