The Pan-Arctic PhD programme in Extractive Industries is a multidisciplinary (with a focus on social sciences), multi-university, cooperative PhD programme formally associated with the University of the Arctic, and the core activity for the University of the Arctic Thematic Network: Arctic Extractive Industries.

This programme is funded in part by the participating universities as well as by a generous grant by the Norwegian Centre for International Cooperation in Education (SIU).

Students can apply for travel funds for participation. Please contact the respective course organisers for details.

From the Arctic to the tropics – industry advances to ever remoter areas in the search to satisfy the thirst for resources in the global economy. In most cases the advance of industry is a significant driver of other subsequent changes, reaching from changes in renewable resource management of indigenous peoples, through demography, social structure all the way to political and legal change when different national and international regulations evolve as industry advances. However strong the talks about climate change and alternative energies may be, in the closer future still fossil resources will remain the mainstay of economic development.

In the set of courses that we are arranging, we wish to comparatively analyse the principles in which such effects of industrial development can be studied and regulated. The remoter the locations for possible resource extraction, the more frequently is a marginalised population in the periphery and a vulnerable natural environment affected. As a result, the benefits often go to the centres, while the costs remain in the periphery. Specialists in the field of political science, international relations, social anthropology, human geography, and law will introduce lessons learned from their respective cases in the Arctic, with comparative outlooks to elsewhere. Discussion is encouraged to focus on ways, instruments and tools to ensure that extractive industrial activity in remote areas brings benefits for the people living there.

PhD students with a thesis topic remotely or directly connected to regions and topics of Arctic extractive industrial development are encouraged to participate in this course as part of the Uarctic Thematic Network of “People in Arctic Extractive Industries” PhD programme. The students complete the course with a paper or a draft from a chapter of their thesis.