Gunhild Hoogensen Gjørv has a permanent position as Professor of Critical Peace and Conflict Studies at the Centre for Peace Studies, UiT The Arctic University of Norway. She was awarded the Fulbright Arctic Initiative scholarship, one of those selected for the first cohort (focusing on energy security) which was designed to coincide with the US chairmanship of the Arctic Council. She was also one of ten experts selected as a member of the Norwegian national evaluation committee to examine Norway’s efforts in Afghanistan.

Her research interests include developments in security theories including gender and feminist security perspectives. Research on security in the Arctic particularly on the relationship between extractive industries, human security/state security in the Arctic, and ideas and practice of “peace” in the Arctic, as well linkages between security, governance and geopolitics in the Arctic context; and security analyses of civil-military interaction based on field work in Afghanistan. Her research project for the Nansen Professorship combines her interests from the Arctic to Afghanistan, examining the role of Arctic states in the current migration crisis and how Arctic states immigration policies either support or detract from the perception of the Arctic as “peaceful”.

The Nansen Professorship in Arctic Studies at the University of Akureyri is a tribute to the famous Norwegian polar scientist and humanist Fridtjof Nansen and is awarded each year for a twelve month period to a person working on issues that bear on the legal, economic, social, political, international and natural circumstances in the Arctic. For the 2017/2018 scholarship the selection committee seeked a candidate interested in contributing a year to focus their research effort on technological, legal, political or social issues related to the Arctic with special emphasis on issues that are shared between Iceland and Norway, with examples such as natural resource management, climate change, resource extraction and governance in the Arctic.

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