Jessica M. Shadian, Ph.D.

Over the course of two decades, Shadian has lived and worked as a researcher, associate professor, and consultant throughout the European and North American Arctic. Dr. Shadian is widely published; her peer-reviewed books, articles, book chapters and other news commentary concentrate on the global politics of the Arctic, Arctic Indigenous governance and law, critical Arctic infrastructure innovation and investment, and Canadian Arctic security and diplomacy. Her expertise is regularly solicited by media organisations, governments, the private sector, academia, and think tanks. Shadian’s 2014 book: The Politics of Arctic Sovereignty: Oil, Ice, and Inuit Governance (Routledge) is the first in-depth history of the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) and Inuit sovereignty in global politics reaching back to pre-European discovery. Her consulting work began while living in the Norwegian Arctic as the co-creator and organizer of an Arctic Dialogue series that brought together state and local political and industry leaders, local and Indigenous communities, and academia to increase information sharing about Arctic resource development. Dr. Shadian holds a Ph.D. in Global Governance from the University of Delaware (2006) during which she wrote her doctoral dissertation at the Scott Polar Research Institute (SPRI), University of Cambridge, UK on an NSF award. She spent the following 5 years in Norway at the Barents Institute and then as a Senior Researcher at the High North Center for Business and Governance, Nord University, Bodø after which she was awarded an Associate Professor, Marie Curie COFUND Fellowship, at the Aarhus Institute of Advanced Studies (AIAS), Denmark. In June 2017, Shadian completed a two-year Nansen Professorship co-funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the University of Akureyri, Iceland after which she turned to dedicate herself full-time to build Arctic360. Shadian lives in Toronto with her husband and two children.