This spring, as part of my PhD, I spent five months as a Research Fellow with the Arctic Initiative at the Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
The Arctic Initiative brings together researchers and other experts from around the world working on a wide range of topics: ocean management, biodiversity, security policy, geopolitics, food security, health care, and the role of Indigenous peoples in diplomatic institutions, to name a few.
The Arctic Initiative is interested in people and communities in Northern Norway as part of their research on thriving communities in the Arctic. People have lived in the Arctic for thousands of years. Maintaining populations and communities in the region is important for many reasons, including preserving cultures and knowledge, ensuring sustainable resource management, and securing national presence.
At Harvard, I worked mainly on a paper about community resilience in the Arctic. Although Arctic communities are very different, they share many of the same challenges: depopulation, long distances, political decisions made in southern capitals, rapidly shifting weather, and climate change.
The paper I am writing focuses on the thriving community of Lovund, known for its profitable aquaculture industry, and seeks to gain insight into the factors that help communities withstand these challenges. People already live good lives in the Arctic, but if we want to maintain its populations and societies, we need more knowledge about how more people can discover opportunities and thrive in the North.
Under the leadership of Director Jennifer Spence, the Arctic Initiative has an active network. I have had a rich and inspiring research stay with seminars and roundtable talks, an Arctic film festival, and opportunities to present my work before Arctic researchers and other PhD candidates. In addition, networking and gaining a better understanding of the breadth of Arctic research have been valuable parts of my time at Harvard.
At the High North Centre, our research primarily focuses on communities in the North. This makes our collaboration with the Arctic Initiative very rewarding, and we look forward to new cooperations in the future.
Maja Wolland Blomberg is writing her PhD thesis on addressing the population challenge in Northern Norway. Her PhD is part of the research project InnNord: How can we become more people in Northern Norway?
