The Arctic is deeply entangled with world politics and the large global challenges of our time. Climate change and global warming have a profound impact on Arctic geographies, societies, and ways of life. Growing external interest in the region’s natural resources and transport routes has moved the region into the epicenter of broad geopolitical concerns and global divisions and tensions. Yet, knowledge and experiences of Arctic peoples, societies and communities, including Indigenous peoples, can profoundly challenge these dominant narratives and framings of the Arctic, and provide alternative, decolonial, and critical perspectives and agency to world politics and global change. Never has there been such demand for new, multidisciplinary knowledge on the Arctic region and its connections to the rest of the world.

In this context, it is crucial to examine whose experiences and what kind of knowledge are valued in political decisions and policymaking, and for what purposes that knowledge is used. The master’s degree programme in Arctic World Politics addresses these issues from a critical, multidisciplinary perspective that centers local-to-global connections and Indigenous knowledge, combining Politics and International Relations, Indigenous Studies, Environmental Studies, Sociology, Anthropology and Gender Studies. In addition to power relations, conflicts and systems of governance between human societies and states, we highlight the central role of multispecies relations, socioeconomics and Indigenous worldviews. During the two-year study program, you will build a comprehensive understanding of world politics, especially from the perspective of Arctic peoples, societies and communities, and develop skills in multidisciplinary and critical thinking. Such skills are necessary to address a variety of complex problems and challenges that are shaping global change today, and in future. The program culminates on a Master’s thesis that allows you to explore in depth a topic of your own choosing.

Kaksi yhteiskuntatiedeiden opiskelijaa opiskelijahaalarit päällä istuskelemassa ja juttelemassa Kemijoen rannalla syysauringon paisteessa.

About the Arctic World Politics programme

The master's degree programme in Arctic World Politics is unique to University of Lapland. The programme allows you not just to study, but also live in a Northern society and environment, and study as a member of an international, multidisciplinary research community with strong expertise in interdisciplinary Arctic research.

  • Concepts and Approaches in Arctic World Politics 50 ETCS
    (Introduction to Arctic World Politics 10 ETCS, Advanced theories in International Relations 10 ETCS, Northern Knowledges 10 ETCS, Arctic Indigenous Governance and Gender 10 ECTS, Anthropological Approaches to the Arctic 10 ETCS)
  • Elective Studies 10 ETCS
  • Arctic World Politics thesis seminar, methodological training and master’s thesis 60 ETCS

 

The student can choose 10 ECTS electives in accordance with their own research and study interests.

University of Lapland’s multidisciplinary master’s degree programme in Arctic World Politics is internationally unique, and opens the graduates a wide range of career pathways in public, private, and third sectors. Expertise in the Arctic region is on high demand on national, EU and international levels, and knowledge that is grounded on, and sensitive to, local and Indigenous perspectives is considered particularly valuable. Arctic and multidisciplinary specialization is an advantage for positions that require such expertise, but does not preclude employment in other posts and positions that have a broader profile. As a graduate in Arctic World Politics, you may work across national and international environments, for instance as a government official, or in various expert positions in international institutions, non-governmental organizations, higher education, media, think tanks, and private enterprises. The degree is research oriented, and provides a solid ground also for a research career and PhD Studies.

As a student in Arctic World Politics, you will study in English as part of an international group of students, and in a research and teaching environment that consists of an international team of scholars who hold versatile Arctic circumpolar experience. In addition to the research community at the University of Lapland, students will benefit from the international research networks and expertise found at the University of Lapland’s Arctic Centre. Should you wish to gain further international experience during the study programme, you have the possibility to get international experience for example by participating in a short international student mobility, doing an internship abroad, or becoming a My Global Diary Ambassador or an international tutor. Our goal is that each student gets a degree, which gives you acquirements for internationality and strengths in international labor markets. The goals of international competencies will be discussed with your teacher tutor and will be planned as a part of your personal study plan.

The master’s degree programme in Arctic World Politics is research oriented, and offers a good ground for further study on a doctoral level.

Multidisciplinary critical approaches, and connecting environmental concerns with broader social and political analysis, are prerequisites for understanding Arctic world politics. In addition to research on global power structures, and on the relations, interactions and conflicts between states and different institutions and actors, we seek to understand Arctic world politics from the perspective of radically different world views, multispecies relations, and material flows and power structures.

Arctic world politics can be examined through diverse topics, themes and cases. Research can explore the relations between the environment, various forms of social organization, and their connections to world politics, or the ways in which global and local processes of change are entangled, and interact with, one another. We study, for instance, the ways in which the environment and the anthropocene affect world politics on the level of both theory and practice; the local and global impact of Arctic natural resource extraction and infrastructure projects and their connections with colonial histories and present; and the potential role that Indigenous knowledges and agency can have in world politics. Likewise, the research may examine the objectives and possibilities of Arctic cooperation, critical and decolonial approaches to Arctic geopolitics, security and militarization, or how colonialism, gender, race, and political economy affect Arctic governance. By attending to the Arctic, our goal is to build new theoretical, conceptual and epistemological perspectives and insights to world politics at large.

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