Photos, stories, biographies, and contact details for many IPY partners participating in the People Day on September 24th, 2008

Lars Poort
Growing up on the island of Bornholm, a small island in the Baltic Sea with rich geological diversity, Lars found an interest in science and the natural world early on. After completing his BA in language and geography from the teachers training college he moved to Greenland. For the past six years he has taught English and science in communities in the northwest of Greenland, and in a settlement on the east coast of Greenland. In 2004 he started a three-year research project for his MA in education, on the impact of climate change on subsistence-dependent communities in Greenland.

The close working relationship with local communities in this beautiful country and in the harsh climate has convinced him of the importance of heightening public awareness of climate change. Lars now works for the Institute of Arctic Education, Inerisaavik, Nuuk to further science teaching in Greenland, an opportunity to heighten local knowledge of climate change issues, as well as to campaign for a strengthened climate agenda in the public school system in Greenland.


Dr. Alan Parkinson
The Arctic Human Health Initiative (AHHI) is an Arctic Council International Polar Year (IPY) coordinating project that highlights the human health concerns of the Arctic people. Activities related to AHHI focus on the significant health disparities that still remain between indigenous and non-indigenous populations in the Arctic, as well as the health impact of environmental contaminants, rapid economic development, and climate change. AHHI is being led by Dr. Alan Parkinson, of the Arctic Investigations Program (AIP), a unit of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention located in Anchorage, Alaska.

Parkinson has been working with AIP in Alaska for almost 25 years. During this time, he has been involved with a number of different projects, ranging from international disease surveillance to climate change. Parkinson says that the disease rates among Alaskan Natives have significantly decreased since his arrival in Alaska. “Life expectancy in Arctic populations has greatly improved over the last 50 years” he notes, “And reductions in infectious disease mortality have been especially dramatic.” Parkinson and his colleagues at AIP have been able to document these reductions through surveillance systems that monitor bacterial diseases that cause pneumonia and meningitis in Arctic populations. These surveillance systems have been used to evaluate the effect of interventions such as vaccines. Parkinson says that, “The best part of this job is seeing decreases in rates of disease after implementation of a vaccine program.” Of his time at AIP, Parkinson explains, “We [at AIP] really can have an effect on public health. That’s what makes this job so rewarding.”

Originally from New Zealand, Parkinson spent 10 years researching the health of people working in Antarctica before moving to Alaska. But his original interest in circumpolar research dates back to the third IPY, when he was a young boy in New Zealand. “I am actually a graduate of the last [third] polar year,” he explains. “In 1957, when I was only about 10 years of age, I followed Sir Edmond Hillary’s trans-Antarctic expedition as he led a group of scientists across the Antarctic landscape to determine the total size of Antarctica’s ice mass.” Parkinson describes this event as having made a major impact on him. “I think that sparked my interest in working in Antarctica and the Arctic. [Hillary] was sort of my childhood hero.”

Parkinson offers advice to those interested in circumpolar health. “Try to make a difference in people’s lives. Be passionate about what you do.” He encourages young scientists to not give up. “Often if you work at something hard enough and long enough, you eventually get lucky. I have been very lucky. I have spent more than 30 years working in cold places on the planet and had a lot of fun doing it.”


Dr Grete Kaare Hovelsrud
Senior Researcher, CICERO – Center for International Climate and Environmental Research-Oslo, in Norway. CICERO P.O. Box 1129, Blindern, 0318 Oslo Norway. Tel: +47 22 85 87 69; Mobile: +47 95 80 60 46; Fax: +47 22 85 87 51; e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

A social anthropologist with more than 25 years experience in working and travelling in the Arctic on various projects in a number of disciplines (quaternary geology, reindeer ecology, marine geology and social anthropology). Her research include work in East Greenland on the social and economic aspects of seal hunting, looking at how external international organizations such as Greenpeace have impact on local, quite isolated communities in the north. After six years as General Secretary to NAMMCO the North Atlantic Marine Mammal Commission, she started research on the consequences of climate change for local communities in the Arctic. Her current research focuses on the community adaptation and vulnerability to past, current and present adaptation and vulnerability to climatic, environmental, social, political and economic change. She co-leads, with Dr Barry Smit, Univ. of Guelph, Canada, the IPY Consortium CAVIAR – Community Adaptation and Vulnerability in the Arctic Regions, with more the 24 case studies throughout the Arctic, and is project leader for a number of other EU and Norwegian Research Council funded projects on the consequences of climate change in local communities and how these changes relate to national and international processes. Local involvement in the research design is one of the distinctive features of Dr. Hovelsrud’s research. Another is the fundamentally interdisciplinary approach she applies to all her projects, including meteorologists, oceanographers and fisheries biologists.

She is a member of the IPY Joint Committee, a member of the IASSA (International Arctic Social Sciences Association) Council, and the Norwegian IPY National Committee. In wearing these hats she sees it as her responsibility that the social sciences is always included in major scientific efforts in the Arctic. She has been a dog musher, and is currently a skier and kayaker and would prefer to be travelling around in the Arctic over an office job.


Birger Poppel
Research Project Chief, SLiCA (Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic), Ilisimatusarfik - University of Greenland. T: +299 36 24 06; C: +299 55 62 66; E: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Born in Copenhagen in 1950 where he also grew up and graduated from high school in the summer of ’69. He holds an M.A. in economics from the University of Copenhagen (1978). After two years at the municipality of Copenhagen and four in a union of social workers in Denmark he moved to Greenland in 1984 to be an advisor for a working group on ‘unemployment insurance’ (established jointly by the Greenland Home Rule Government and the National Workers Union in Greenland (SIK).

In Nuuk he met Mariekathrine who became his wife. That was the main reason to ‘root’ in Greenland but the magnificent nature and challenging jobs certainly supported that decision. From the foundation of Statistics Greenland in 1989 until 2004 he was Chief Statistician. He then moved to Ilisimatusarfik, University of Greenland where he has a position as researcher and Research Project Chief of the Survey of Living Conditions in the Arctic, SLiCA.

He is chairman of the Greenland IPY committee (and member of the Danish IPY committee), participates in several IPY project and is a member of the IPY Data Sub Committee. The IPY projects that he has been focusing on lately are SLiCA (IPY#386) and the International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS VI) (IPY#69) organized by the International Arctic Social Sciences Association. ICASS VI took place in Nuuk from August 22-26 gathering 375 researchers, indigenous experts and other Arctic stakeholders.

His professional activities include research in Greenland’s modern history, living conditions of the indigenous peoples of the Arctic, the mixed market and harvest, herding based economies of the Arctic; and the economic, social and demographic developments of the Circumpolar North: He publishes articles on theses subjects and have been teaching at all levels within further education in Greenland.

He is currently a member of the Board of Governors of Ilisimatusarfik, University of Greenland. He has two daughters Ursula (29) working in South Africa and Upaluk (28) studying at Ilisimatusarfik, the University of Greenland.


Dr. Rasmus Ole Rasmussen
Presently working as researcher for NORDREGIO - Nordic Centre for Spatial Development which is a research institute of Nordic Council of Ministers, situated in Stockholm, Sweden.
E: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
T: +46 8 463 54

Most of his research career has been in relation to social and economic development in the Arctic, and has been publishing extensively on topics such as fisheries dependent communities in the Arctic, and with special focus on social and economic issues in relation to Greenland. In connection with IPY he is involved in several national and international projects, one of them with focus on the social and economic changes of communities in the Arctic in relation to ongoing climate changes. The focus is especially on the differences in gender and generation responses to contemporary challenges in the Arctic.

His background is a PhD in Economic Geography in 1976, and he has been affiliated with Roskilde University in Denmark from 1974, since 1991 as director of NORS – North Atlantic Regional Studies. From 1987 to 1991 he was working in Greenland in connection with the establishing of Statistics Greenland. Was Visiting Professor at McGill University in 1994-95, Fulbright associate at University of Alaska, Fairbanks in 1995-96, and Nordic Visiting Professor at the University of Lapland in Rovaniemi, Finland in 1999-2002.


Prof Sverker Sörlin
Director, Swedish Institute for Studies in Education and Research (SISTER), Sweden; Professor, Division for History of Science and Technology, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. E: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Sverker Sörlin has a PhD in the History of Science and Ideas from Umeå University and is currently professor in the Division of History of Science and Technology at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm. He was the first director of the Swedish Institute for Studies in Education and Research, SISTER (2000-2003), and he has held visiting positions at the University of California, Berkeley (1993), University of Cambridge (2004-05), and the University of Oslo (2006). Among his publications in English are co-edited books, Denationalizing Science, which appeared as the Sociology of Science Yearbook 1992; Sustainability – the Challenge (1998); Narrating the Arctic: A Cultural History of Nordic Scientific Practice (2002); and articles on the history and sociology of science since the 18th century, on modern research policy and on Arctic issues. In Swedish he has authored or edited some thirty books. For his general history of European science and ideas 1492-1918, published in two volumes, he was awarded the August [for Strindberg] Prize for the best non fiction book of the year 2004. Along with his academic career he has conducted evaluations and inquiries in Sweden and internationally. He has engaged in public debates on education and research policy, and in policy advice; during 1994-1998, and again since 2005, he has served on the Swedish Government’s Research Advisory Board. He was the director of the Center for Arctic Cultural Research at Umeå University in the 1990’s when he also led the NOS-H funded research program “The Northern Space”. He currently serves as the President of the Swedish National Committee for the International Polar Year 2007-09. He was co-proposer of the European Science Foundation “Boreas” program for Arctic studies in the humanities and the social sciences to be launched in the fall of 2006.

During the International Polar Year 2007-2009 Sörlin’s research is focused on the role of glaciology and local knowledge in the formation of an early discourse on climate change in the Arctic and circumpolar regions during the first half of the 20th century. He is also involved in the work on strengthening and developing Sustained Arctic Observing Networks, SAON, across the Arctic.


Yvon Csonka
Professor, Department of Cultural and Social History, Ilisimatusarfik - University of Greenland, Nuuk, Greenland, E: yvcs @ ks.uni.gl, Special link: Inuit Relocations in the Eastern Canadian Arctic and in Greenland
Yvon is a professor of anthropology at the University of Greenland. He has a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Laval University (Québec, 1991), a DEA from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris (1986), and an MA in social sciences from the University of Neuchâtel (Switzerland, 1977). Over the past 25 years, he has conducted long and repeated fieldwork on the west coast of Hudson Bay (oral history of the ‘Caribou’ Inuit of Nunavut), in Chukotka (ethnography and archeaology near Bering Strait), and over the past seven years in Greenland. He has also visited Alaska, Iceland, and northern Fennoscandia as faculty on PhD field courses. Yvon Csonka is just finishing a four year term as President of the International Arctic Social Sciences Association, IASSA, which culminated in August 2008 with the Sixth International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences in Nuuk, Greenland, an official IPY activity. He is a member of the Scientific Committee of the European Science Foundation EUROCORES programme BOREAS, and directs one of the projects within this programme. In the context of the BOREAS ‘Moved by the State’ (MOVE) project (IPY project # 436) he aims at comparing 20th century Inuit relocations in the Eastern Canadian Arctic and in Greenland. To that end, he has recently conducted fieldwork in the Thule area (Qaanaaq municipality, northwest Greenland) and in Clyde River (Kangiqtugaapik, Baffin Island). In both cases, he was also consultant for the project ‘Siku-Inuit-Hila ’ (Ice-People-Weather) directed by Shari Gearheard (University of Colorado) within the context of the IPY project SIKU (# 166) (See also a related project led by Shari, ELOKA). At the University of Greenland, Yvon Csonka is currently member of the Academic Council, and chair of the PhD-Committee. His latest publication is a thematic double issue of the journal Etudes/Inuit/Studies (volume 31, in press) on “Chukotka” and its peoples, which he guest-edited.


Catherine Alexandra Gagnon
PhD Candidate, Canada Research Chair in Conservation of Northern Ecosystems, Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR), Canada, E: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Catherine is currently working on her interdisciplinary PhD in environmental sciences at Université du Québec à Rimouski, Canada. For her research Catherine is interested in examining how members of northern communities acquire knowledge about their changing environmental and how this knowledge is then transferred and integrated within the community. More specifically, she will be looking at one important aspect of knowledge acquisition (community-based monitoring) and one important aspect of knowledge transfer (exchange of knowledge between generations). Her work will be performed in collaboration with the communities of Mittimatalik (Nunavut, Canada) and Aklavik (Northwest Territories, Canada). Catherine focuses on these questions because she considers that gaining information about changes happening in the Arctic is one of the main tools that human societies can use to adapt to new conditions. Catherine’s research is part of the IPY project Arctic WOLVES (Arctic Wildlife Observatories Linking Vulnerable EcoSystems), and she also collaborates with researchers from the IPY project CAVIAR (Community Adaptation and Vulnerability in Arctic Regions).

Catherine got her start working up North in 2000, while doing her Bsc at McGill University. She returned up North every year since, and always was fascinated by the environmental knowledge held by members of northern communities. During her MSc research, Catherine worked in collaboration with Inuit elders and hunters from Mittimatalik to document local knowledge and stories regarding arctic foxes and the fox trapping era. In the future, she hopes to continue her research on local environmental knowledge and contribute to the greater involvement of local people and their knowledge in the global change research.


Claudio Aporta
Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada. E-mail: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Claudio was born in Mendoza, Argentina, and moved to Canada in 1997 to pursue graduate studies in Anthropology at the University of Alberta. Since 1998 he has been involved in ethnographic research in several Inuit communities of Nunavut, particularly in Igloolik. His major interests are connected to how Inuit relate to their physical environments and to the transmission of Inuit oral knowledge in contemporary contexts. Claudio is the Principal Investigator of ISIUOP (Inuit Sea Use and Occupancy Project), that is working with several researchers and northern participants in the documentation and mapping of how Inuit use and have used the sea ice.

Sea ice is a fundamental feature of the polar environment; it is also one of the most tangible indicators of change in the Arctic. During the last two decades, and in the past several years in particular, both polar scientists and local indigenous residents have detected important shifts in the extent, timing, dynamics and other key parameters of arctic sea ice. Sea ice plays a critical role in daily life in northern communities for six to eight months of the year (for travel, harvesting, economic, and leisure activities) and as such is an important part of community health and well-being.

ISIUOP is undertaking a multidisciplinary approach to understand Inuit knowledge of the sea ice and local observations of change, coupled with analysis of change from local, social scientific, and natural scientific perspectives and methods. In so doing, we will be in a position to broaden our collective understanding of both ecosystem and community vulnerability to sea ice change. ISIUOP is also part of the larger IPY initiative SIKU, that entails sea ice documentation in Alaska, Greenland, Chukotka, and Canada.


Andy Mahoney
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I am currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics at the University of Otago, New Zealand. I received my PhD in geophysics from the University of Alaska Fairbanks where I studied landfast sea ice along the Alaska Arctic coast. Landfast ice is the sea ice attached the coast. Arctic communities use it as a platform for hunting and traveling and its presence mitigates coastal erosion. I have brought my background in sea ice geophysics to the interdisciplinary Siku-Inuit-Hila project (Sea Ice-People-Weather) project, which is examining the dynamics relationship between people and sea ice in the Arctic. Working with local experts from Barrow (Alaska), Clyde River (Nunavut) and Qaanaaq (Greenland) we are developing a better understand the sea ice around these communities, how it is changing and how this is affecting their lives and lifestyles (see also ELOKA). As well as learning from community sea ice experts about the local processes that are most important, I have also helped establish a sea ice monitoring program at each community. I remain involved in this ongoing project, though I am currently in Antarctica studying winter sea ice growth processes that differ from those in the Arctic due to the presence of deep floating ice shelves flowing into the ocean from the land. We lack the benefit of traditional knowledge of sea ice processes in the southern hemisphere, though I am sure some of the local experts I have got to know in the Arctic could provide valuable insight if they could see Antarctic sea ice for themselves.


Karin Granqvist
Karin Granqvist has a PhD in History from Umeå University, Sweden, (2004), a Master of Arts (1996) and a Bachelor of Art (1994) from the same university. She is currently working with her research project on four Swedish natural scientists’ and polar explorers’ representations of Sami during the 19th century with the working title Representations of Sami in 19th-century Polar Literature.

She has been a lecturer at the University of Umeå as well as a researcher financed from several research foundations both as a Ph.D. candidate and postdoctoral researcher such as Wallenbergstiftelsen, Samefondens Kulturdelegation, Stiftelsen Lars Hiertas Minne, The Swedish Royal Academy for Sciences and European Science Foundation (ESF). She has also been at the University of Tromsoe, Norway, as a guest researcher for a couple of years and had a postdoctoral position at the same university. Karin has also been at the university board for the founding of the Sami center, today called Center for Sami research (CeSam)-Vaartoe, at Umeå University in 1995-1996. She is currently a referee for ESF, and a member of a research group in the Boreas-program, ESF.

She has publications in both Swedish and English on topics such as Sami, Sami history, cultural meetings and early modern legal history, besides Swedish 19th-century polar history and history of sciences. Among her English publications are the articles “Confrontation and Conciliation. The Sami, the Crown and the Court in 17th Century Swedish Lapland” (2004), in the referee journal Acta Borealia, “Between the Arctic ‘Other’ and Subject: Two Researchers’ Images of Sámi in the 19th century” in Encountering Foreign Worlds: Experiences at Home and Abroad (2007, Iceland University Press), “Thou shalt not have any other God but me. Witchcraft- and Superstition Trials in Swedish Lapland during the 17th century” in Ecology of Spirit: Conference: Cultural Plurality and Religious Identity in the Barents Region (1998) and the co-edited book Representing Gender, Ethnicity and Nation in Word and Image (2001) where she also has the co-written article “Introduction. A Question of Representation”. In Swedish she has written several articles on Sami history, early modern legal history, and cultural encounters.

During the International Polar Year 2007-2009 has Karin in her research been focusing on representations of Sami in four Swedish natural scientists’ and Arctic explorers’ field research journals during the 19th century. She is interested in how the representations looked like, if there were any changes in the representations over time and in comparison between the four natural scientists, and if so, why. She has also an international comparative perspective in her research as she compares the representations of Sami with Robert Edwind Peary’s representations of Inuits that are to be found in his material on his many Greenland expeditions as well as attempts on the North Pole and his expedition to the North Pole (area). Karin is interested in finding out if the same set of representations where made on the Sami as well as the Inuit, since that would mean that it existed a discourse on indigenous people amongst researcher that visited and worked in the Arctic region during the 19th century. She also wants to find out how these researchers and explorers interacted with Sami and Inuit since that can explain why the representations appeared as they did. She is also, to some extent, studying the representations of Sami as to contexts of ideas about national colonialism, as well as history of science and ideas, and Swedish Sami politics.


Winfried Dallmann
Born in 1956, employed at the Norwegian Polar Institute (Oslo / since 1998 Tromsø, Norway) since 1987 as a geologist. PhD in geology from the University of Oslo (1987). Main responsibilities are geological mapping and coordination of research activities in the Norwegian polar areas of the Arctic and Antarctic.

Besides geology, Winfried Dallmann has experience from work with indigenous peoples of the Russian North, mainly through: INSROP (International Northern Sea Route Programme) 1996-1999, information network ANSIPRA, Arctic Network for the Support of the Indigenous Peoples of the Russian Arctic, since 1998, IPY project Monitoring of development of traditional indigenous land use areas of the Nenets Autonomous Okrug, NW Russia since 2007.


Martin Jeffries
Martin Jeffries is a snow and ice geophysicist, who has worked on glacier hydrology in Norway, ice shelves and ice islands (tabular icebergs) in the Canadian High Arctic, sea ice in the Arctic and Southern Oceans, and lake ice in Alaska. A Research Professor of Geophysics at the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, he is currently on secondment at the National Science Foundation (NSF), where he is the Program Director for the Arctic Observing Network.

Originally from Manchester in the U.K., Martin has lived in the United States since 1985. He left the U.K. in 1981 and moved to Canada, where he completed his doctorate at the University of Calgary. Martin still follows the fortunes of Manchester United Football Club, Lancashire County Cricket Club and the England cricket team. He despairs of the England football (soccer) team.

In recent years Martin has worked closely with K-12 teachers and students in Alaska under the auspices of ALISON, the Alaska Lake Ice and Snow Observatory Network. ALISON is an integrated research and education program that involves K-12 teachers and students as scientific partners in the study of ice thickness, the depth, density and temperature of snow on the ice, and conductive heat flow, at frozen lakes and ponds throughout Alaska. ALISON offers the opportunity for teachers and students to learn science by doing science in their own backyards with familiar and abundant materials, i.e., snow and ice, and to contribute to new scientific knowledge and understanding of lake ice processes. More information about ALISON.

With Kim Morris, also of the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Martin initiated the Nenana River project. It involves Denali Borough School District teachers and students, who are primarily monitoring freeze-up in the autumn and break-up in the spring. More information about the Nenana River project.

Figure: Martin (LEFT) toasts TEA (Teachers Experiencing Antarctica and the Arctic) with Shannon Graham (right), who was then a science teacher at the Washington School for the Deaf, Vancouver, Washington. This photograph was taken in April 2002 at 34 Mile Pond in the Chatanika River valley, about 60 km northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska.


Tristan Pearce
PhD Candidate, Global Environmental Change Group, Department of Geography, University of Guelph,Canada

Tristan Pearce is a doctoral candidate with the Global Environmental Change Group in the Department of Geography at the University of Guelph, Canada. His research focuses on vulnerability and adaptation of communities and socio-economic systems to global environmental changes, especially climate change, with a focus on Arctic regions. His PhD research, as part of the International Polar Year project “CAVIAR” (Community Adaptation and Vulnerability in Arctic Regions), examines the role that institutions play in adaptation to climate change risks in an Inuvialuit community in the Canadian Arctic: Ulukhaktok, Northwest Territories (NWT). The research examines both the formal institutions of the community, region, and Territory, and informal institutions - social networks, as they mediate vulnerability and shape adaptive capacity to climate change risks.
Tristan grew-up in the city of Prince George in northern British Columbia Canada and completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Northern British Columbia. He is the author of publications in the field of climate change research, has presented at national and international conferences and forums, and works with Inuit organizations, government and industry leaders on climate change adaptation planning. In 2006, he formed ArcticNorth Consulting with Dr. James Ford, McGill University to offer industry, government and community clients expertise and consultancy services in climate change vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning; natural hazard assessment and emergency response planning; and resource development in a changing climate.


Dr Julia Jabour
Senior Lecturer, Institute of Antarctic & Southern Ocean Studies, University of Tasmania
T: +61 3 6226 2978 W: IASOS Homepage

Julia has been researching, writing and lecturing on matters to do with Antarctic law and policy for more than 17 years at the University of Tasmania. She has visited Antarctica five times and has been on the Australian delegation to Antarctic Treaty Consultative Meetings. Julia has a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics, philosophy and sociology, and a Graduate Diploma (Honours) in Antarctic and Southern Ocean Studies. For her Ph.D. she researched the changing nature of sovereignty in the Arctic and Antarctic in response to global environmental interdependence.
Recently completed journal articles and book chapters cover issues about Antarctic tourism; applying environmental laws from the Antarctic to outer space; what happens when fur seal conservation is so successful that the seals become a danger to other threatened species; search and rescue in the Southern Ocean; and a public presentation at the Antarctic Tasmania Mid-Winter Festival on whether whales be both an iconic species and dinner?


Dr. Gianluca Frinchillucci
Gianluca Frinchillucci, Director of the Scientific Museums in the city of Fermo (Marche – Italy). E: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
http://arcticdreams.blogspot.com/ T: +39 328 4753745

Gianluca is Director of many museums, including the Polar Ethnographic Museum “S. Zavatti”, the only one in Italy concerning the Arctic Region. He is also the editorial director of the polar studies review called “Il Polo”. He is the creator of, and responsible for, the research project “Map of Arctic People”, realized in collaboration with the Polar Ethnographic Museum “S. Zavatti” of Fermo, the CNR-Polarnet, the Perigeo Onlus Association, other Italian universities and the club CAI (Italian Mountain Sports Association) Executive Presidency, which aim to study the culture and the lifestyles of the peoples living in the Arctic and sub arctic regions and to establish with them lasting relations based on reciprocal cultural exchanges.
He has carried out research in Eastern Greenland since 2002 and promotes the spreading of arctic peoples’ knowledge in the Italian schools through educational projects and intercultural exchanges. He realizes ethno-anthtropological researches in different parts of the world, in particular among Ashaninkas of Peru and in the Omo River Valley in Ethiopia.

Gianluca on IPY.org:
In Depth: Map of Arctic Peoples
In Depth: Friends from the World
“The Lords of Tundra” exhibition tours world
How the project “Friends from the World” was born


Narelle Campbell
Station Leader - Mawson 2008
Australian Antarctic Division
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Job Description:
The station leader (similar to a Company manager) is responsible for everyone and everything on station. Imagine a small, remote community - that's Mawson. The same things affect stations in Antarctica as remote towns anywhere, but there is the added factor that because of its remoteness, harsh environment and the challenges in getting to and from a lot more has to be taken into consideration. When the last ship leaves at the end of summer, there won't be another for many, many months. On site, the buck stops with me. I am responsible for overseeing the day-to-day running of the station, that morale on station stays good. If problems occur on station I have to sort them out...I’m a confidante and moral support as well as a manager of a small but diverse group. Winter expeditioners are mainly trades staff who carry out maintenance on the station and keep it ticking over, but there are also weather observers, comms, a doctor, a chef and scientists.

How did she get there?
Narelle was born and raised in Wingham and Taree (regional NSW), has 23 years experience in print media, covering logistics, sales and marketing in senior management roles. Narelle began her career at Rural Press Limited before moving to Fairfax Media where she was National Circulation Manager for Fairfax Business Media for seven years (The Australian Financial Review, BRW, Shares and Personal Investor). Here she was responsible for overseeing print orders, distribution, sales, marketing, subscriptions and audits.

In 2005 Narelle took on the role of National Manager, Income Development, for Mission Australia (an organization who works with disadvantaged individuals – drug and alcohol affected people, homeless etc etc). She has degrees in social sciences and counselling and has worked as a volunteer for Missionbeat in Sydney - providing support to homeless people. As well as working with inmates in Correctional Centres. She has lived in Coogee (a suburb of Sydney) for the past 12 years and when not at home in Coogee or at Mawson Station, she can be found out climbing, sailing, kayaking or walking. Narelle has walked the Kokoda Track and completed high altitude climes in Nepal, India, Africa and Chile.


Dr Dana Bergstrom
Dr Dana Bergstrom is a Principle Research Scientist at the Austrlaian Antarctic Division. She has been studying Antarctic and sub-antartic ecology over the last 25 years. Her particular interests is the impact of change, both natural and human induced, on ecosystems . Currently she is Co-chair of an international IPY program called Aliens in Antarctica, which is looking at the potential for seeds and other propagules to hitchhike to Antarctica with humans.