Program

Anna Nikolopoulos

Senior Advisor / UiT The Artic University of Norway, Tromsø, Norway

Profile:
Dr. Anna Nikolopoulos is a Swedish physical oceanographer residing in Tromsø, Norway. She currently serves as a Senior Advisor at UiT The Arctic University of Norway and coordinates the development of the Atlantic-Arctic Distributed Biological Observatory (A-DBO) within the EU H2020 project Arctic PASSION. She is co-chairing the EuroGOOS Arctic Regional Ocean Observing System (Arctic ROOS) and was recently appointed co-chair of the GOOS/SAON task team proposing an Arctic Ocean Regional Alliance (ArORA). Her expertise includes the analysis of geophysical data related to Arctic Ocean dynamics and ecosystem functioning, numerical modeling of coastal hydrodynamics, and oceanographic fieldwork and instrumentation. She earned her Ph.D. in Physical Oceanography from Stockholm University and has worked with several international research institutions, where she has remained engaged also in teaching and outreach activities.

Yoshihiro Iijima

Professor / Tokyo Metropolitan University

Profile:
Dr. Yoshihiro Iijima completed his PhD in Physical Geography (Climatology) at Tokyo Metropolitan University in 2001. From 2003 to 2016, he conducted field observation research on landscape environmental changes in North Eurasia as a researcher at JAMSTEC, and published numerous papers on climate change and permafrost environmental changes in North Eurasia (primarily Eastern Siberia and Mongolia) during the 2000s. From 2016 to 2023, he served as an associate professor (promoted to professor in 2021) at Mie University, where he led the Future Earth Research Laboratory and expanded his research interests to include interdisciplinary studies on human society’s adaptation to climate change and environmental changes. He has contributed to research projects such as the International Permafrost Association’s Action Group on “Permafrost and Culture,” the Belmont Forum’s Arctic Research (HYPE-ERAS), and the Japan-Russia Bilateral Joint Research Program (JST-SICORP), etc. Since 2023, he has been a professor at the Department of Geography, Tokyo Metropolitan University, where he cotinues research on environmental changes in the terrestrial regions of North Eurasia, climate change, and human impacts. For his long-term observational research contributions, he was awarded the Outstanding Research Contribution Prize by the Ministry of Environment and Tourism of Mongolia in 2017.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Yoshihiro-Iijima
Orcid ID: 0000-0003-0590-5696

Kristín Ingvarsdóttir

Associate Professor / School of Humanities, Faculty of Languages and Cultures, University of Iceland

Profile:
Dr. Kristín Ingvarsdóttir received her Ph.D. in Social Sciences from Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo in 2006 and a master’s degree from the same university in 2002. She joined the University of Iceland as Assistant Professor of Contemporary Japanese Studies in 2019 and has been the Head of Japanese Studies since 2020. Kristín primarily teaches courses on Japanese modern history and society. Her current research interests include the history of Icelandic-Japanese relations, Japan’s engagement with the Nordic countries and the Nordic Arctic, as well as other aspects of Japan’s international affairs. In 2022, Kristín held a Visiting Associate Professorship at the Graduate School of Social Sciences at Hitotsubashi University. In the same year, she received a Commendation from Japan’s Foreign Minister for her contributions to promoting Japan-related research in Iceland.
Orcid ID: 0000-0003-2812-8404

Hiroki Takakura

Professor / Tohoku University

Profile:
Hiroki Takakura is a social anthropologist, and he serves as the Director and a Professor at the Center for Northeast Asian Studies, Tohoku University, Japan. In 2022, he held a position as a Visiting Professor at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland. Dr. Takakura has been conducting anthropological fieldwork in Siberia since 1994. His research interests are wide-ranging, covering human–animal relations, the effects of climate change, disaster resilience, and the ethnohistory of Siberia and Northeast Asia. Since 2009, his work has included interdisciplinary research on ice jam floods and permafrost thawing in Yakutia. Following the 2011 Japan earthquake, he collaborated with engineers and medical professionals on applied disaster studies. More recently, he has been studying the issues of Siberian Indigenous peoples who have become war immigrants after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He recently co-edited a volume with Florian Stammler (University of Lapland) titled The Benefit of the Cold and Domestication, published by Routledge in 2025. He is also the author of Thirty Thousand Years of Siberia in Human History: From Arctic Adaptation to the Russo-Ukrainian War (in Japanese, Heibonsha, 2025).