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In the early 1990s, the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War opened opportunities for considering the circumpolar North as a region with many similar characteristics and challenges. Indigenous peoples throughout the circumpolar North could now communicate and collaborate on issues they faced. Scholars in the natural and social sciences and humanities in the East and West could now research collaboratively on such threats as environmental pollution, species endangerment, global warming, and the health and well-being of the North’s many Indigenous peoples. Meanwhile, in the early 1990s, Finland and Canada proposed that the eight states of the Circumpolar North collaborate on transboundary environmental contaminants. This initiative led to the formation in 1996 of the Arctic Council, a high-level intergovernmental forum that fosters cooperation and addresses common concerns in the region.

Within this dynamic political and environmental setting, faculty in the History and Political Science Departments and School of Education at UAF proposed an M.A. program in Northern Studies to prepare individuals for living and working in the North in a wide variety of fields. The program accepted its inaugural cohort of students in Fall 1992. Professor Judith Kleinfeld was the founding Director of the program; other core faculty included historians Terrence Cole and Claus-M. Naske and Political Scientists Jerry McBeath and Jim Gladden. The program has benefited from steady and effective leadership since its founding nearly three decades ago and from the inclusive and supportive culture that the program maintains. Following Professor Judith Kleinfeld’s retirement, Dr. Mary Ehrlander led the program for several years, and Dr. Brandon Boylan now serves as Director.

In 2016, owing to the increased attention to the Arctic as a bellwether for global warming and a reservoir for many of the world’s environmental contaminants, both of which negatively impacted wildlife and the lives and lifeways of the region’s Indigenous peoples, we changed the program name to Arctic and Northern Studies. The new name more clearly identified our regional focus, called attention to our faculty’s expertise in issues of critical significance to the Arctic, and would thereby more effectively attract students interested in studying and preparing for careers in the region.