Introducing the Inaugural UArctic Founder’s Scholar Award

In celebration of UArctic at 25, a new award program was opened to honor the UArctic Founders by giving back to the next generation of Arctic research. With support from the UArctic Heal Founder’s Fund, a legacy fund started by Stephen Heal in 2020, the UArctic Founder’s Scholar Award aims to support students attending UArctic Congress conferences whose research reflects the values that formed the organization.

This year the award went to three students and early career researchers from across the Arctic: Aaron Orkin, Arla Magga, and Ida Huusmann. Their work exemplifies the values that built and guided UArctic throughout its history—developing the north for northerners, the recognition and inclusion of Indigenous knowledge, capacity building, and education in the North.

Aaron Orkin is a Canadian ECR at the University of Toronto, empowering volunteer responders for emergency care in underserved Arctic communities. He also serves as Medical Director for Ornge’s Emerging First Response Team program. He is involved in several presentations at Congress that collectively represent a program of research and practice focused on strengthening local emergency capacity, translating evidence into community owned response systems, and advancing culturally grounded methods to support engagement, reflection, and sustained implementation in Arctic and Indigenous communities.

Arla Magga is a Saami PhD student at the University of Oulu in Finland. She is presenting at Congress on Saami duodji and Saami education as spaces of Indigenous desire-based future-making. Sámi duodji refers to clothes, accessories or means of transport mostly made with traditional techniques of handwork. Traditionally, these skills have been preconditions for Indigenous Saami people to survive in the Arctic North. Modernization and relocation of Saami children to residential schools, among other things, have led to a decline in craft skills that many Saami are trying to revive. The purpose of her research and presentation is to explore components of creating safer spaces for Indigenous futures while preserving cultural heritage.

Ida Huusmann Is a Danish PhD student and ECR at the Technical University of Denmark. Her studies on the degradation of drinking water as an effect of climate change will be presented at Congress. Her research focuses on drinking water pollution in Greenland driven by climate change and permafrost thaw. It integrates fieldwork and geospatial analysis, with collaboration from representatives in the municipalities to assess a pan-Greenlandic evaluation of future water security.

The students were chosen by a panel of UArctic Founders based on the merits of their research projects and how the founding values are reflected through their achievements.

Aaron Orkin will be involved in sessions 824 and 806 at the UArctic Congress on May 26 and 28, Arla Magga will present in Session 214 on May 27, and Ida Huusmann in Session 71 on May 26.

You can learn more about the UArctic Congress at the conference website and hear more about the Scholar’s work at their panels, found in the online Congress program.