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Letter from the President By LARS KULLERUD President, UArctic
S
pring 2020 became a crash course in working from home, remote collaboration, and distance learning and teaching. Rather unexpectedly, the COVID-19 pandemic made the UArctic way of working into everyday reality for many of us. This push towards digital collaboration has revealed its strengths and weaknesses, and it is clear that we still have much to learn before remote learning and collaboration become perfect. Another consequence of the pandemic is the abrupt stop in student and faculty mobility. Distance collaboration is dependent on people-to-people relationships that are best built in person; open minds and mutual understanding are created by meeting people of other parts of the Arctic. We are grateful for the efficient work of our member universities and the
flexibility of the funders which have made it possible to cope with this dramatic change in international mobility. Traveling to do research in northern communities would be irresponsible at a time like this. Therefore, for the summer and fall 2020, we face a near-total stop in field-based research and learning. We also do not know if the pandemic will influence upcoming field seasons. This has severe consequences on planned research, the continuity of data series, and not least the training of next generations of researchers. COVID-19 also provides an opportunity to refocus and rethink strategies for academic collaboration and Arctic research. The next crisis that restricts our travels is likely not a virus but something else. We must use this pandemic to reformulate strategies for Arctic academic and research collaboration in which the communities and peoples in the region will have a more central role.
