Meet the Team

John Moore is a Research Professor at the University of Lapland, Finland, and the Lead of the UArctic Thematic Network on Frozen Arctic Conservation. His main research activities relate to climate engineering, sea level change, and ice sheet dynamics. Moore is a Member of Finnish Academy of Science and Letters; he has been a member of 6 Antarctic, 4 Greenlandic and 20 Svalbard scientific expeditions; and he was the chief scientist on 2007-2009 International Polar Year project "Kinnvika". Moore has authored over 200 articles (~21000 citations, H-index=61, 19 articles published in PNAS & the "Nature" group).

Lars Kullerud has held the position of President of UArctic since May 2002. Throughout his UArctic Presidency, Lars has continued to foster an academic interest in the northern environment and development issues and published several academic papers on the issue in addition to representing UArctic. Before joining the UArctic team, he was the Polar Programme Manager for GRID-Arendal which serves as UNEP's (United Nations Environment Program) key polar centre. His academic background is in Precambrian Geology and Isotope Geochemistry, geostatistics, petroleum resource assessments, as well as assessments of the Arctic environment.

Ilona Mettiäinen is an environmental social scientist specialising in the Arctic region and co-designing strategic solutions to climate change. She started working at the Arctic Centre of the University of Lapland in 2010. Currently, she is finishing her PhD at the University of Tampere as an Alfred Kordelin Foundation Grantee and a visiting researcher at the Arctic Centre. Mettiäinen’s recent research projects include co-designing a climate service for the winter tourism industry in Northern Finland (Blue-Action - EU Horizon 2020; case study leader, 2017-2020); co-production of knowledge with Arctic communities on solar geoengineering (with Cornell University, 2016-2017); adaptation of reindeer herders to climate change (2021-2023); as well as GRISCO "Greenland ice sheet conservation as a community designed response to climate change" project (2021-2023) where she has been leading the social sciences research in the multidisciplinary knowledge co-production process in Ilulissat. She is vice-lead of the UArctic Thematic Network on Frozen Arctic Conservation since 2022. Mettiäinen has wide expertise in science communication, including arts-based visualization of social science research. Her photograph exhibition “Nanoq – Imag(in)ing climate change” has been displayed in 14 venues since 2016 in Finland and abroad. In 2017, she traversed the North-West Passage onboard a Finnish icebreaker as a member of the Arctic 100 Expedition. She was a Visiting Arctic Fellow at Dartmouth College (2017) and an NSF Arctic-FROST Early Career Fellow (2018).

Marianne Hagen is a former deputy minister of Foreign Affairs of Norway. She came to work with UArctic from the position of Executive Vice President of Aker Solutions, one of Norway's largest industrial companies delivering solutions, construction and services to the global energy industry. Marianne was Head of Communications at the Royal Court, and has worked as an advisor to the CEO of the Norwegian Shipowners Association. She has an extensive career in politics and as a board member of publicly listed companies. In UArctic, Marianne will be responsible for government relations and communications for the UArctic Tipping Point Actions program, as well as its spokesperson.