APECS Sweden Conference 2025

Anastasia Emelyanova

Associate Professor in Gerontology, University of Oulu

Anastasia Emelyanova works in the Arctic Health research group of the University of Oulu. She is a Vice-Lead of the UArctic Thematic Network on Health and Well-being. Her research interests include One Health, healthy ageing in the Arctic communities, demography and population changes across the Arctic region, northern health and well-being, and policy in respective fields. She holds academic degrees in Arctic Medicine from the University of Oulu (Finland) and Social work from the Northern Arctic Federal University (Russia). In 2024, she has been awarded the Jens Peder Hart Hansen award that recognizes excellent emerging researchers in the field of circumpolar health. She coordinates the project “The Nordic AHA Communities - Arctic Healthy Aging communities: Safe and inclusive outdoor environment and public spaces” (2023-2026). Anastasia is an author to several ongoing international projects related to circumarctic health such as ArcSolution (2024-2028), One Health in Northern Communities and Ecosystems (2020-2025) and also an recurrent invited teacher to university courses such as Global Public Health, Arctic and Nordic Perspectives on Sustainable Development, and others.

Emil Olofsson

PhD candidate in political science, Umeå university

Emil Olofsson is a PhD candidate in political science at Umeå university, Sweden. His research studies the green transition in northern Sweden from the perspective of a "just transition", focusing on the conflictual and complex nature of justice in an Arctic sustainability context. In this work, he examines how sustainability transitions and "green" investments in the Swedish Arctic are connected to and legitimized through specific promises of regional development, just outcomes, and sustainability.

Felicia Söderqvist

PhD Candidate in History, Luleå University of Technology

Felicia Söderqvist is a PhD candidate in history at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden, and will be finishing her thesis in Autumn 2025. With a background in social and cultural analyses and environmental history, she now specialises in the social history of energy systems. Presently, she is focusing on the consequences of Swedish hydropower projects. She is also a board member of the Swedish branch of the International Committee for the Conservation of the Industrial Heritage (TICCIH Sweden). 

Gesche Blume-Werry

Ecosystem Ecologist, Umeå University

Gesche Blume-Werry is an ecosystem ecologist with a passion for high latitude ecosystems and an interest in the interplay of plants and their environment. Her work in Arctic tundra and peatlands focuses on belowground plant processes, such as root phenology and root production, and often includes measurements outside the summer season.

Luisa Ickes

Associate Professor in Geoscience and Remote Sensing, Chalmers University of Technology

Luisa Ickes is a meteorologist by training and works as a associate professor in the division "Earth Sciences and Remote Sensing" at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. She earned her doctorate in Switzerland and has worked as a researcher in Switzerland, Germany, and Sweden, as well as spending a year with the United Nations before moving to Chalmers. Her research focuses on clouds and how clouds are influenced by aerosol particles. She investigates how climate change and clouds are connected, with a particular focus on the Arctic. One of her research topics focuses on marine fuel regulations and how they impact ship emissions, Arctic clouds and Arctic climate.

Luisa Ickes primarily works on model development and uses various models, such as global climate models and small-scale process models, but she is also active in the field – she was participating in the ARTofMELT expedition to the Arctic in 2023.

Janne Sirniö

Independent Researcher in Arctic Sustainability

As a multidisciplinary researcher, Janne Sirniö specialises in cultural traditions, regional development, and socio-environmental sustainability. His work bridges Indigenous knowledge systems with contemporary sustainable development efforts, embodying an intellectual extension of my background as a traditional healing professional. Raised in livelihoods centred around the handcrafting of fishing lures and reindeer ownership, and having lived on both the Swedish and Finnish sides of Sápmi and the River Valleys, Sirniö has developed a profound understanding of the cultural significance of nature and place in shaping cognition, health, and identities, a connection crucial in his role as Research Assistant for the Sámi Trail of Tears research project (2022-2024). His research examines how Indigenous practices and spirituality contribute to Arctic sustainability while also addressing the ethical challenges of integrating these perspectives into contemporary frameworks.

Johan Sandström

Professor of Business Administration and Arctic Six Chair, Luleå University of Technology

Johan Sandström is Professor of Business Administration at Luleå University of Technology (LTU), Sweden, and during 2024-2026 one of the Arctic Six Chairs. He defended his PhD on organizational greening at Umeå University in 2002. Since 2015 his research has been situated in the Arctic, predominantly focusing on the relation between mine and community, but also on issues related to migration. The main methods are ethnographic, based on engaging with community members and spending time on site. His research is communicated in various forms, through scientific publications, but also through photography, film, music, and theatre. The Organizing rocks project (est. 2015), targeting Kiruna (Sweden) and northern Saskatchewan (Canada), was presented in the form of a multi-media art exhibition in Luleå, Kiruna and Vienna. Conceptually, his studies focus on analyzing power relations and enactments of responsibility and accountability. He has also conducted comparative work on the iron ore region of the Pilbara, in western Australia. Currently he is developing research on promises attached to "green" transitions in the Swedish Arctic, with comparative outlooks in Alaska and, through Arctic Six Chair position, also in the Norwegian and Finnish Arctic. He is also engaging in comparative work on how newly arrived migrants are organized in the Swedish Arctic, but where the comparative cases are in Italy and the UK, respectively. Aside from his scientific engagements, Sandström also sits on the board of Havremagasinet, Norrbotten’s largest exhibition hall for contemporary art.

Lena Maria Nilsson

Doctor of Public Health, Umeå University

Lena Maria Nilsson is Sámi, with roots in the forest Sámi community of Máláge/Malå in Västerbotten County, Sweden. Currently, she leads a project funded by Forte on healthy ageing in Indigenous communities, looking at access to traditional foods in elder care in both Sápmi and among the Mal Paharia in Eastern India. She is also involved in a project examining historical data on diet and health among school children from the unique Norrland Survey conducted between 1921 and 1931.

Åsa Andersson

Indigenous Sámi and Tornedalian artist and researcher

Åsa Andersson is a conceptual artist, storyteller, and traditional healer based in Kiruna, Swedish Sapmi. Her main interests are working with the place-voice of nature and reconnecting the inner human nature with the outer in order to balance and heal relationships and communication with the earth. Her platform is the 3 cultures of Sapmi and Tornedalian (Torne Valley) and the arctic nature. In contrast with colonialism, modernity and extractive green industry created environmental disasters and severe place loss. How to rethink this relationship?

Åsa studied typography, graphic design, landscaping, psychology, rhetoric, dreams, and healing arts of traditional Chinese medicines, European- and north Scandinavian/Sami- and Finnish traditional healing practices.