The Calotte Academy is an annual traveling symposium and an international scientific forum in the North Calotte region of Europe. It is designed to promote interdisciplinary discourse as well as academic and policy-oriented dialogue between senior researchers, early career scientists and advanced graduate students and other northern stakeholders, such as policymakers, civil servants and community leaders and planners. It is a “school of dialogue” and it is participatory by nature: the principle is to share knowledge and experiences between scientists and communities.
During its first 20 years the Calotte Academy has built partnerships between researchers and community members and does community-based research as well as develops research models for community-based research. The Calotte Academy also serves an interdisciplinary brainstorming meeting to bring researchers and other experts from different fields, regions and countries together to discover innovations and new methods and to develop international research projects, plans and applications.
Arranged for the first time in 1991, the Calotte Academy is an international platform for policy-oriented dialogue and dissemination of research. As a traveling symposium with an emphasis on both expertise and dialogue it is a post-modern academic stage and workshop that fosters interdisciplinary, knowledge(s), and dialogue-building and implements the interplay between science and politics.
Since 2002 the Calotte Academy has also served as a sub-forum for the Open Assemblies of the Northern Research Forum. From 2010 onwards, it has additionally functioned as the main annual forum for the discussions and research planning of the Thematic Network on Geopolitics and Security. The Network is a joint international, academic network between the University of the Arctic and the Northern Research Forum and consequently its senior and student members are potential contributors of the Calotte Academy.