Board of Directors

Executive

President Peter Geller, PhD Academic Governance Officer Grant MacEwan University Peter Geller is the Academic Governance Officer at Grant MacEwan University (Edmonton), where he is responsible for leading and coordinating the provision of effective academic governance. Prior to his current position, Peter lived and worked in northern Manitoba for over a decade, teaching in a variety of northern communities. He was Associate Professor and founding Dean of Arts at the University College of the North (UCN), with responsibilities for leading the development and delivery of degree programming, including the Bachelor of Arts in Aboriginal and Northern Studies. Peter has served on the ACUNS Board since 2006. His contributions to ACUNS include serving as a co-organizer for the 9th ACUNS International Student Conference, Communities of Change: Building an IPY Legacy. His research interests include Aboriginal and northern history, with a focus on visual representations.

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Vice President Monique Bernier, PhD Co-Director, Centre d’études nordiques & Professor, Remote Sensing Institut national de la recherche scientifique (INRS), Centre eau, terre et environnement Monique Bernier is a professor at INRS since 1993, specializing in remote sensing applied to water sciences.  For over a decade, Monique has been interested by the monitoring of snow cover, river ice and wetlands in Nordic areas. Her twenty years of expertise in the characterization of the snow cover using SAR images as well as her manual field work has been recognized both in Canada and internationally. She is a member of the Centre d’études nordiques (CEN), since 2001 and the co-director since 2008. She is on the ACUNS Board of Directors since 2007.

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Secretary-Treasurer Gary N. Wilson, PhD Associate Professor, Political Science University of Northern British Columbia Gary N. Wilson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at the University of Northern British Columbia. He is also the Coordinator of the Northern Studies program at UNBC. Gary teaches comparative politics, including courses in comparative northern development, and politics and governance in the circumpolar north. His research focuses on Inuit multilevel governance and regional politics in northern Russia and Canada. Gary has been involved in ACUNS as the representative for UNBC since 2007, and was elected to the Board in 2009.

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Directors

Hugo Asselin, PhD Professor, Humanities and Social Development Canada Research Chair in Aboriginal Forestry Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue Hugo Asselin holds a BSc in biology, a MSc in forest ecology, and a PhD in palaeoecology. Now a professor at Université du Québec en Abitibi-Témiscamingue, he holds the Canada research chair in aboriginal forestry. His research themes are ecology and palaeoecology of the boreal forest and forest tundra, as well as social and aboriginal forestry. When he was a PhD student at Université Laval’s Centre d’études nordiques, Hugo was part of the organizing committee of the 6th ACUNS National student conference on northern studies (2000). Hugo has served on the ACUNS Board of Directors since 2007.

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Marianne Douglas, PhD Director, Canadian Circumpolar Institute & Professor, Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences University of Alberta Marianne Douglas has always been interested in the Arctic and has managed to turn a lifelong interest into her career. Her work in the Canadian High Arctic started during her MSc and PhD (1993) research at Queen’s University where she trained as a paleolimnologist. The study of lake sediments revealed that great changes were occurring in the present day freshwaters of the Arctic. In 1995 she joined the Geology Department at the University of Toronto where she spent the next ten years developing her lab and expanding her research to also include Antarctica. In 2006, she joined the University of Alberta as the Director of the Canadian Circumpolar Institute and Professor in the Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Marianne joined the ACUNS Board of Directors in 2006.

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Audrey Giles, PhD Associate Professor, School of Human Kinetics University of Ottawa Audrey Giles is an applied cultural anthropologist who is an Associate Professor in the School of Human Kinetics at the University of Ottawa. She first started going to the Arctic and sub-Arctic for summer jobs during her undergraduate years at Queen’s University. While there, she became increasingly interested in the intersections of physical practices (i.e., sport, recreation, leisure), gender, and Aboriginal cultures. She then went to the University of Alberta for graduate school, during which time she conducted her research in the Deh Cho region of the NWT. After completing her doctorate in 2005, she accepted a position at the University of Ottawa, where she and her fantastic graduate students conduct research with Aboriginal communities in northern Alberta, the NWT, and Nunavut. Audrey has been heavily involved in promoting northern studies and particularly issues that pertain to equity within the discipline. She has served on the Canadian Northern Studies Trust committee for five years, has been the University of Ottawa’s representative to ACUNS for four years, has facilitated the Northern Scientific Training Program process at the University of Ottawa for four years and was the Co-Chair of the 2003 ACUNS International Student Conference.

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Michael Goodyear, M.Sc. Executive Director Churchill Northern Studies Centre Michael Goodyear is the Executive Director of the Churchill Northern Studies Centre (CNSC), a research and education facility located 23 km east of Churchill, Manitoba. A wildlife biologist by training, Mike is a life-long resident of the North, having lived and worked throughout northern Canada from Labrador to the Mackenzie Delta. Since becoming an ACUNS Director in 2001, he has helped with efforts to broaden the organization’s membership base and looks forward to supporting the ACUNS mandate through enhanced strategic planning and communication.

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Student Member

Kevin Turner PhD Candidate, Wilfrid Laurier University Kevin Turner is a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University.  His research focuses on assessing drivers of spatial and temporal variability in lake water balance conditions throughout the Old Crow Flats, northern Yukon Territory.  Kevin served as co-chair for the 9^th International ACUNS Student Conference on Northern Studies and was selected as a recipient of the W. Garfield Weston Award for Northern Research (PhD).  Kevin is the first student to serve on the ACUNS Board.