The Arctic Workshop
The Arctic Workshop is a small, friendly, and informal conference open to all students and professionals interested in high-latitude environments: past, present, and future.
Founded at INSTAAR, we have grown to be a community-organized workshop shared internationally.
52
workshops
in
20+
cities
since 1970
Hear a wide range of topics from both poles
Although Quaternary history and other paleoenvironmental fields have traditionally been at the core of the Workshop, sessions have expanded over time to include a range of Arctic and Antarctic topics such as climate, permafrost, atmospheric chemistry, environmental geochemistry, archeology, geomorphology, hydrology, glaciology, soils, ecology, and oceanography.
Visit our changing locations
Workshop locations are shared amongst the polar environmental science community. Recent locations include Amherst (Massachusetts), Longyearbyen (Svalbard, Norway), Stockholm (Sweden), Boulder (Colorado), Buffalo (New York), and Bergen (Norway). In recent years, the Workshop shifted from being hosted in Boulder in alternate years to open meeting locations every two years.
Contact us
For general questions, the best way to reach us remains to email ArcticWS@colorado.edu. For questions about a specific yearly workshop, please email the current organizer.
Latest workshops
The 53rd International Arctic Workshop will be held in spring 2026 at the University at Buffalo, the state university of New York. A link to more information will be posted here later. For questions, email ArcticWS@colorado.edu
The 52nd International Arctic Workshop was held on 13-16 March 2024 at the Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst. The Workshop started with a Wed. evening icebreaker, followed by Thu. through Sat. morning sessions, and an optional Sat. afternoon Quaternary field trip.
The 51st International Arctic Workshop was held at the Svalbard Science Centre in Longyearbyen, Svalbard in June 2022, followed by an optional two-day excursion. The Workshop location at 78ºN was at a much higher latitude than any of the previous 50 conferences.
After a one-year delay due to Covid, the 50th International Arctic Workshop was held online in April 2021. Logistics were based in Boulder, Colorado. The Workshop included a special Saturday event celebrating the scientific legacy of workshop founder John T. Andrews.
Join a welcoming community
Interact with first-time and veteran participants in a safe, productive environment
Relaxed, informal
setting
Modest meeting size
(75-100 participants)
Student participation
(~50% of attendees)
Single-track
schedule
Participants of the 2024 Arctic Workshop at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
International participants - The Workshop typically includes attendees from universities and other research organizations across many of the arctic nations as well as additional countries working in Antarctica.
Code of Conduct -To help ensure a safe, productive, and welcoming Workshop for everyone, all attendees must agree to a Code of Conduct ().
Indigenous Peoples participation - The Workshop encourages Indigenous Peoples to help organize and attend. The Workshop typically recruits specific Indigenous speakers and offers free registration to all Indigenous attendees.
As we gather together from many locations across the globe, the Arctic Workshop recognizes and honors the many different Indigenous Peoples of the circumpolar Arctic as well as the Ute, Cheyenne, and Arapaho whose historical territories include Boulder, Colorado, where the Workshop was founded.
We are grateful for their ancestral and contemporary stewardship of their homelands and place-based traditional knowledge. We celebrate their participation and collaboration in high-latitude science.
At the same time, we acknowledge the painful history of ill treatment and forced removal, including an 1864 massacre of Arapaho by the US Cavalry at Sand Creek, Colorado. In this case, the survivors were forced out of Colorado to reservations in Wyoming and Oklahoma, where most Arapaho live today. Injustice and inequities persist, including Indigenous Peoples bearing the early brunt of global warming.
The Arctic Workshop seeks to increase participation of Indigenous Peoples in its annual events. It is recruiting specific Indigenous speakers and offering free registration to all Indigenous attendees.
The Workshop also encourages more collaboration of high-latitude researchers and indigenous organizations, especially projects addressing the needs of northern communities. The Workshop supports the University of Colorado Boulder's pledge to provide educational opportunities for Native students, faculty and staff, and to advance understanding of the history and contemporary lives of Native peoples.
Poster session at the 2024 Arctic Workshop at the University of Massachusetts Amherst
Sponsors
A number of universities and institutions have supported the Arctic Workshop.
Founded at INSTAAR, the Workshop has grown to be a community-organized workshop shared internationally. Sponsors for a specific workshop depend on its location.
Some of the many sponsors of Workshops since 2009:
For many years, the National Science Foundation's helped sponsor student participation in the Workshop.
Workshop history
The Workshop has grown out of a series of informal annual meetings started in 1970 by (INSTAAR). The purpose of the early meetings was to give graduate students an opportunity to present their ongoing research, gain experience in public speaking, and obtain feedback from more senior researchers. Subsequent meetings retained this emphasis while simultaneously expanding to also include the contributions of professional researchers. For many years, the National Science Foundation (NSF) generously supported graduate student participation. Tad Pfeffer (INSTAAR) became the Workshop Director in 2004, followed by Gifford Miller (INSTAAR) in 2013. In recent years, the Workshop has been guided by a group of faculty from multiple academic institutions in the U.S. and worldwide.
For many years, the Workshop alternated between being hosted by INSTAAR in Boulder (Colorado) and by various academic institutions in cities worldwide. These institutions have secured support from their respective governmental agencies and typically offered partial travel support to students. In recent years, the Workshop has shifted to open meeting locations for all meetings.
John Andrews was an early advocate of a gender-neutral graduate student program as well as encouraging female representation at the Arctic Workshop.
From left: Isla Castañeda (Professor, UMass Amherst), Sarah Principato (Professor, Gettysburg College), Kathy Licht (Professor, UIPUI), Anne Jennings (Sr Research Associate, INSTAAR), Julie Brigham-Grette (Professor, UMass Amherst), and Áslaug Geirsdóttir (Professor, Univ. of Iceland). All are former graduate students advised by the Workshop's founder John Andrews. Photo taken at at the 2024 Arctic Workshop in Amherst.