Sanna VAlkonen

Principal Investigator
University of Lapland

Sanna Valkonen is a Sámi scholar from Northern Finland. She is a professor of Sámi research at the University of Lapland and an adjunct professor (docent) of research on Sámi society at the Giellagas Institute. Sanna has a PhD in political science (2009) and she specializes in developing the field of social scientific Sámi research since 2001 drawing from community-based engagement and understanding. Her research focuses on Sámi society, politics and thought. Her recent publications include the book The Sámi World (Routledge 2022, co-edited).

Mari Viinikainen

Project Manager
University of Lapland

Mari is a Project Manager in MÁHTUT project at the University of Lapland. She has a Bachelor degree of Arts and a Master’s degree of Social Sciences from the University of Lapland. In MÁHTUT project she focuses on administrational tasks, planning and coordinating the project.

Trude Fonneland

Professor
The Arctic University of Norway

Trude Fonneland is professor in cultural studies at the Arctic University Museum of Tromsø, UiT the Arctic University of Norway. Her research focuses on museology, contemporary colonialism and repatriation processes, combining cultural studies and indigenous studies. She is a co-editor of Memory Institutions and Sámi Heritage: Decolonisation, Restitution and Rematriation in Sápmi (2024, Routledge) and partner in the research project The New Sámi Renaissance: Nordic colonialism, social change and Indigenous Cultural Policy.

Krister Stoor

Associate Professor
Várdduo – Centre for Sámi Research

Krister Stoor, Associate professor at Várdduo – Centre for Sámi Research. Stoor is born in Jukkasjärvi parish and grew up in Kiruna and Orusjohka in the northern part of Sweden.

Stoor’s research interests are traditional knowledge or intellectual Indigenous traditions. The field has drawn interest in recent decades and these discussions will certainly continue. Through the elders’ experiences, their practical work and oral traditions a good picture of heritage and knowledge can be gained. In that way people can tie past, present and future together – like a crocheted tablecloth.

Camilla Brattland

Associate Professor
The Arctic University of Norway

Camilla Brattland is associate professor in Sami cultural studies at UiT – the Norwegian Arctic University Museum. She is a member of the Norwegian Research Council’s board for climate and environmental research. Her research projects focus on Indigenous leadership and participation in natural resource management and documentation of local, traditional and Indigenous knowledge.

Eli-Anita Øivand Schøning

Project Coordinator
The Arctic University of Norway

Eli-Anita Øivand Schøning is a Project Coordinator in the project MÁHTUT at the Arctic University Museum of Norway.

She has a Master of Science in Business Administration, Nord University 2001 and Master of Indigenous Studies, The Arctic University of Norway 2018.

She will defend her Ph.D., about knowledge production in Sámi museums, in August 2024.

Eleonora Alariesto

Project Planner
University of Lapland

Eleonora Alariesto is a Sámi Arctic World Politics MA Student and a Project Planner in MÀHTUT project at the University of Lapland, Faculty of Social Sciences. In her MA Thesis Alariesto focuses on the contaminating effects of wind power extractivism in Sámi sacred areas. Alariesto’s thesis contributes to SÁMIPOLITY, MÀHTUT and WAGE Circumpolar Partnership’s research projects focusing on the socioeconomic inequalities of extractivism in Sámi more-than-human sacred landscapes, and the effects of green transition on Sámi circular economies.

Leena Hansen

Researcher
Arctic Centre – University of Lapland

Leena Hansen (ex. Heinämäki), L.L.D and Docent in Indigenous peoples’ rights, has done both academic and practically oriented co-operative research on Indigenous peoples, including Sámi rights for a couple of decades. She has been commissioned to write several reports by the Finnish government on Sámi rights in order to aid developing related legislation. Besides of the Sámi rights, her research interests include general environmental human rights, especially in relation to climate change. Hansen has been actively involved in academic teaching in the University of Lapland. She has acted as a member of Parliament’s Human Rights Board, and acts currently as a legal adviser member in the national 8 j working group on biodiversity convention, led by the ministry of environment. She works as a University Researcher in Máhtut, as well as visiting researcher in the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland.

Lotta Viikari

Professor
University of Lapland

Lotta Viikari is a Professor of Public International Law at University of Lapland, Rovaniemi (Finland). As public international law is multifaceted (governing the relations of states, but also promoting the rights of humans, etc.), Viikari has been researching various kinds of topics.She also serves as the Director of Institute of Air and Space Law. For Viikari, the nature (and reindeer) of northern Scandinavia is very important. She highly appreciates the Sámi natural and cultural heritage. Being an indigenous community divided between several states, she wishes that the Sámi hopefully find public international law as a productive tool advancing interests of the Sámi within Sápmi.

KriStina Sehlin-Macneil

Associate Professor
Várdduo – Centre for Sámi Research

Kristina Sehlin MacNeil is an Associate Professor of Sámi Studies and the Deputy Director for Várdduo – Centre for Sámi Research at Umeå University in Sweden, where she is also a researcher. Her research focuses on conflict and power relations between Indigenous communities and extractive industries and international comparisons of these; violence that impacts Indigenous people; and Indigenous methodologies and ethics. Sehlin MacNeil is a member of several international Indigenous research networks, including co-researcher in Knowledge Network on Mining Encounters and Indigenous Sustainable Livelihoods (MinErAL), and serves on the editorial board of the Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe. She is also co-director for Umeå University’s Faculty of Arts Doctoral College. 

Laura Junka-Aikio

Professor
University of Lapland

Laura Junka-Aikio is a Professor of Northern Politics and Government at the University of Lapland.  Combining a background in the Arts, Cultural Studies and International Politics, her research is multidisciplinary and focused especially on the study of Nordic colonialism  and  the relations between Sámi and majority societies.  Her current research interests center on an effort  to develop decolonial approaches to Arctic geopolitics and militarization in Sápmi. At the University of Lapland, one of her core tasks is to coordinate a new international MA degree programme in Arctic World Politics. The programme is multidisciplinary, and centers Arctic and Northern Indigenous, environmental, more-than-human and critical approaches in the study of world politics. 

CHRISTINA STORM-MIENNA

Director
Várdduo – Centre for Sámi Research

Director of Várdduo – Centre for Sámi Research and associate professor of odontology at Umeå university, Sweden. Other roles are: co-leader of a health project in Arctic Sweden, board member of the Research committee at Sámi Norwegian National Advisory Unit on Mental Health and Substance Use, board member of the Research ethical committee at Sámi University of Applied studies in Norway, Sweden’s representative in the Arctic Council’s Arctic Human Health Expert Group, deputy in Sámi University of Applied Studies Board and representative for Sweden in IASC Standing Committee on Indigenous Involvement appointed by the Swedish Research Council.

MIKA AROMÄKI

Coordinator
The Sámi Education Institute (SOGSAKK)

Janne Näkkäläjärvi

Development Manager
The Sámi Education Institute (SOGSAKK)

Marina FalEvitch

Planner
The Sámi Education Institute (SOGSAKK)

Arto Saijets

Duodji Teacher
The Sámi Education Institute (SOGSAKK)