IASSA Secretariat

International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA)

IASSA was founded in 1990 in Fairbanks, Alaska, at a meeting held in conjunction with the 7th Inuit Studies Conference. The creation of IASSA follows the suggestion, made at the Conference on Coordination of Research in the Arctic held in Leningrad in 1988, to establish an international association to represent Arctic social scientists.

IASSA's president from 2008 to 2011 was Dr Joan Nymand Larsen, senior scientist at the Stefansson Arctic Institute where the secretariat was located. The 7th International Congress of Arctic Social Sciences was held in Akureyri, Iceland, 22-26 June 2011.

Information on the present location of the IASSA secretariat can be found on www.iassa.org.


For a report on IPY 2007-2008, please read Igor Krupnik's contribution, IPY 2007–2008 and Social Sciences: A Challenge of Fifty Years.