New publication: From Arctic Council vision to global university network: UArctic at 25

In 1997, the newly established Arctic Council supported work to explore an ambitious idea: a University of the Arctic that would connect universities, colleges, researchers and northern communities across the circumpolar region.

The following year, in its 1998 Iqaluit Declaration, the Arctic Council formally welcomed the establishment of UArctic as a "university without walls". Twenty-five years on from its official launch in 2001, that vision has developed into an international network of more than 200 member institutions across 25 countries, supporting education, research, student mobility and cooperation on issues affecting the Arctic and its peoples.

Reflecting on the founders' ambitions

The new paper returns to the ideas and aspirations that inspired UArctic's creation.

Firstly, through reflections from people involved in its founding and early development, it explores how their original aims and mechanisms panned out. With the benefit of hindsight, the paper invites them to compare their founding theory of change with reality some 25+ years later. This it turns out, provides some valuable signals for future leadership. Some principles endure (e.g. circumpolarity, Indigenous participation), some mechanisms become more central (e.g. Thematic Networks) and some contexts and challenges change (e.g. geopolitics).

Connecting founders and future generations

Secondly, the publication uses a choice exercise to have the Founders not merely reflect on their founding aims but also to select UArctic Founders' Scholars for the future from a redacted list of candidates. Three were chosen: Arla Magga (University of Oulu), Ida Huusmann (Technical University of Denmark) and Aaron Orkin (University of Toronto). They were funded to travel to UArctic Congress in the Faroe Islands by the Heal fund, where they met with some of the founders.

This new mechanism offers an opportunity to connect the founding generation's ambitions with a cohort of young researchers who are addressing challenges to the Arctic and northern communities today.

The authors hope the paper will encourage further conversations across the UArctic network, including between founders, scholars, and new generations of leadership, and look forward to developing the exercise further for the UArctic Congress in Sweden in 2028.

Read the paper and find out more about the founding aims and pathways for impact at UArctic.