Circumpolar Observatory

Ian A. Simpson is Professor of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Stirling, Scotland, UK. His research specialism is in Geoarchaeology, defined as the reading of soil and sediment stratigraphies found in archaeological and historical landscapes with the purpose of creating new narratives of relationships between societies and their environments. These stratigraphies reflect site activities and early land uses together with associated environmental contexts; they are records of the complex relationships between past societies and bio-physical processes, of landscape histories. Narratives are ‘read’ through innovative theoretical frameworks of landscape and by new techniques in soils and sediments analyses including thin section micromorphology – SEM – EDX, XRF, soil biomarkers and soils and landscape modelling. These analyses offer contributions to transdisciplinary discussion on a) Long-term sustainabilities and resiliences, b) Place, heritage and identity and are applied into c) programmes of Citizen Geosciences. Current major and long-term research programmes are focussed on creating geoarchaeology and landscape change narratives of The North Atlantic region, South Asia and the Middle East. Major themes are: Pristine space to cultural place, Hybrid landscapes; Completed experiments in northern community resilience’s; Soils and Neolithic ritual landscapes; Industrial landscape legacies. He has published over 150 research papers on geoarchaeology themes and has supervised 26 PhD students to successful completion.

Hans Husyan Harmsen is an Archaeologist and Curator at the Greenland National Museum and Archives in Nuuk, Greenland. He completed his PhD from the University at Buffalo’s Department of Anthropology in 2017 with a focus on exploring prehistoric human responses to environmental change along the southeast coast of Sri Lanka and has participated in numerous NSF-funded archaeological projects across the circumpolar North in places such as Kamchatka, the Aleutian Islands and Sweden. He is the former Associate Director of the University at Buffalo’s Social Systems GIS Laboratory and still connected to UB’s Department of Anthropology as a Research Assistant Professor. Hans is also currently a Guest Lecturer at Ilisimatusarfik (University of Greenland) and Co-Director of the Arctic Vikings Archaeological Field School in Vatnahverfi region, South Greenland. Over the past two years he has been involved as a research partner in the REMAINS of Greenland project, exploring the effects of a shifting climate on the preservation of archaeological deposits in West Greenland and the consequent challenges to protecting and preserving Greenland’s cultural heritage. Hans’ research interests include human response to environmental uncertainty, coastal archaeology, industrial heritage, GIS and predictive modeling in archaeology and disability advocacy.

Dr. Lea Rekow is co-lead and co-curator of BifrostOnline, an international, open-access project promoting education for sustainability and climate change awareness.  Lea has held positions as executive director of the Center for Contemporary Art in Santa Fe (NM), founding director of Gigantic ArtSpace (NY), media director at the former Center for Peace and Human Security (NY), adjunct professor of media and communications at Pratt Institute (NY), and cultural advisor for Advance (Australian consulate in NY). She is an advisor to the Integrated Media and Art and Technology programs at Cal Arts, and a member of the Institute for Australian Geographers and of New York Women in Film and Television. She was formerly special envoy for the European-based Open & Agile Smart Cities, an advisor to the European Urban IxD program, and a research fellow at the Center for Art and the Environment (NV). She has sat on numerous advisory panels including for NYFA, SVA, Parsons, Amnesty International, the MacArthur award, and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Lea’s PhD research focused on creative, transdisciplinary practices for reclaiming degraded space in areas where people are living under extreme socio-economic and environmental stress. She has worked extensively with ethnic minorities and marginalized communities, including in conflict zones in Burma, on large-scale land use reclamation projects on the Navajo Nation. Lea founded Green My Favela, an urban restoration project based in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro in 2011, and has helped establish some of the largest-scale urban organic gardening projects in Latin America.

Marcy Rockman is the US National Park Service (NPS) Climate Change Adaptation Coordinator for Cultural Resources, based in Washington, DC. An archaeologist by training, her research focus is how humans gather, share, remember, and transmit environmental information, particularly during colonization. She’s done fieldwork across the American West and Europe and in the Middle East and has worked in environmental compliance in many western states as well. Marcy began work in the DC policy world as an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellow in which capacity she connected archaeology to homeland security risk communication at the US Environmental Protection Agency. Her current role at the NPS addresses impacts of climate change on cultural heritage and use of cultural heritage information in federal- to global-level climate adaptation and mitigation planning. Her major publications include the volumes Colonization of Unfamiliar Landscapes: The Archaeology of Adaptation and Archaeology in Society: Its Relevance in the Modern World, and the new NPS Cultural Resources Climate Change Strategy. Marcy has a Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona, and B.Sc. in Geology from the College of William and Mary.

Nicole Misarti is an Associate Professor-Research in the Water and Environmental Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. She specializes in the historic and paleoecology of nearshore marine ecosystems using isogeochemical methods. Misarti’s background is in archaeology and marine science in high latitudes and she has conducted archaeological, ecological, geological and limnological work in coastal and interior Alaska for almost 20 years. Her research interests include climate and marine ecosystem change over the last 5000 years, how these changes affected humans living in northern coastal environments, and how to apply this knowledge to help navigate the future in a rapidly changing Arctic. Misarti is currently involved in coastal and marine research in western and Arctic Alaska and southern most coastal Patagonia (Chile and Argentina).

Her web page, with current and recent project information can be found at: http://ine.uaf.edu/werc/people/faculty/nicole-misarti/

Currently Funded Projects:

• 2014-2018      Long-term records of abundance and effects of large scale climate change on Alaska Peninsula sockeye salmon; Funding Agency: Alaska Sea Grant
• 2013-2019      WALRUS- Walrus Adaptability and Long-term Responses; Using multi-proxy data to project Sustainability; Funding Agency: National Science Foundation (Arctic SEES)
• 2013-2018      The Hot Springs Village Site: a Window to Southern Bering Sea Paleo-Ecosystems and Human-Landscape Interactions; Funding Agency: National Science Foundation (Arctic Social Sciences)

Leslie King is Professor of Environment and Sustainability at Royal Roads University in Canada. She holds degrees from the University of British Columbia, York University, University of Toronto and the London School of Economics. King was faculty at the University of Vermont, the Founding Chair of Environment at the University of Northern British Columbia, Founding Dean of the Clayton H. Riddell Faculty of Environment, Earth and Resources at the University of Manitoba and Vice President Academic at Vancouver Island University. Recent research projects include Meeting the Climate Change Challenge (MC3), Protected Areas and Poverty Reduction in Africa and Canada, Arctic Climate Predictions: Pathways to Sustainable Resilient Societies (ARCPATH) and Clam Gardens in BC: Eco-cultural Restoration.