Board members

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The board members are as follows:

Frank Sejersen

Frank Sejersen was appointed member of the board since June 2011 and was elected as chair in January 2012

Frank Sejersen is a Danish anthropologist employed as associate professor at Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies (University of Copenhagen), where he has been pursuing research in the Arctic in general and in Greenland in particular, since 1994. The principal areas of research are environmental governance, resource use, self-determination policies, climate change, local knowledge, as well as cultural, economic and societal changes with a primary focus on indigenous peoples. Presently, he is researching local responses to mega industrialization.

Espen Wæhle

Esben Wæhle has been a board member since 1980, and was last re-elected in 2009. He was elected Vice-chair of the board in 2012

Espen Wæhle: "I am a social anthropologist, educated at the University of Oslo in 1989. I carried out field research (1982-83) with the Efe (Mbuti Pygmies) and the neighbouring Lese Dese of the Ituri Forest, in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

I have been active in the Norwegian chapter of IWGIA since 1977-1990 and joined IWGIA's international Board in 1980. I was also active in setting up the Norwegian Rainforest Foundation (1989) and served in two different capacities as board member (1989-91, 1993-1998). From 1992-1995 I was on the advisory board of the Indigenous Peoples Programme at FAFO International in Oslo, Norway. In 1989-1991 I had two different jobs for the Norwegian Foreign Ministry working on issues dealing with environment and development, the longest period dealing with pastoral societies in Mali, Sudan, Eritrea and Ethiopia. From 1992 I have worked in museums: as head of Education & Public Programmes at the Ethnographic Museum of the University of Oslo (1992-98), as the head/keeper of the Ethnographic Collection of the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen (1998-2007), curator of African collections in the same museum (2008) and as exhibition producer at the National Maritime Museum in Oslo from 2010.

Through my work in IWGIA, international museum organizations (ICME/ICOM, EEMDG), the Norwegian Foreign Ministry (NORAD) I have a long-term experience with international work related to development, human rights and indigenous peoples. In the museum world I have dealt with issues relating to international cooperation and exchange, repatriation, illegal trade in cultural goods, cultural property discussions and the colonial roots of ethnographic collections – with a special focus on the Scandinavian role in the colonization of Congo (1870'ies to 1930'ies).

I have been teaching and also publishing a number of articles and photographs on indigenous issues, hunter-gatherers, nomadism/pastoralism and museum anthropology – and I have participated in making over 60 exhibitions, a number of them on indigenous peoples."

Espen Wæhle is Norwegian and was born in 1954.

Mark Nuttall

Mark Nuttall has been a board member since 2003

An anthropologist, Mark Nuttall has lived and worked in Greenland, Alaska and Scotland. He now lives in western Canada and is Henry Marshall Tory Professor of Anthropology at the University of Alberta. His work is mainly concerned with resource use rights, climate change impacts on indigenous peoples and livelihoods, and the participation of indigenous peoples in international Arctic political fora.

He is working closely with indigenous peoples' organisations as a lead author for two key Arctic Council projects, the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA) and the Arctic Human Development Report (AHDR), as well as sitting on the steering committees of both projects. He is also a lead author of the 'Polar Systems' chapter of the Millenium Ecosystem Assessment. He organised the 12th Inuit Studies Conference at the University of Aberdeen in 2000, and was one of the organisers of the 6th Circumpolar Universities Co-operation Conference, also held in Aberdeen in 1999.

He is author of Arctic Homeland: kinship, community and development in northwest Greenland (1992), White Settlers: the impact of rural repopulation in Scotland (1996) and Protecting the Arctic: indigenous peoples and cultural survival (1998), Pipeline Dreams: People, Environment, and the Arctic Energy Frontier (2010), editor of the three-volume Encyclopedia of the Arctic (2005), and co-editor of The Arctic: environment, people, policy (2000) and Cultivating Arctic Landscapes: knowing and managing animals in the circumpolar North (2003).

Current committee/board work includes:

  • Chair, International Scientific Advisory Board on Northern Research, University of Oulu, Finland
  • Member, Canadian Climate Impacts and Adaptation Research Network (C-CIARN) Advisory Board (Fisheries Node)
  • Member, Arctic Council Arctic Climate Impact Assessment Steering Committee
  • International Arctic Science Committee (IASC) representative, Arctic Council Arctic Human
  • Development Report Steering Committee
  • Member, Northern Researchers Advisory Committee (NRAC), University of Alberta
  • Member Editorial Board Etudes/Inuit/Studies
  • Member Editorial Board Polar Record

Frederica Barclay

Photo of Frederica Barclay 

Frederica Barcley was elected to the board in November 2011 

Frederica Barclay:”I am a social anthropologist (M.Sc.) and historian (Ph.D.). I have worked in connection to Amazonian Indigenous organizations since 1977 on issues such as territorial and cultural rights both as a consultant and as an advisor, mostly doing research. I have taught in Peruvian universities and in Ecuador on Amazonian ethnography and history. I have also worked in Nicaragua supporting Rama and Kriol territorial demand, and done extensive research on the situation of health among Amazonian Indigenous Peoples with the Health Ministry in Peru. I worked with Ibis (1999-2002) in charge of their office in Peru as part of the Regional Programme based in Bolivia”.

Frederica Barclay is Peruvian and was born in 1954.

 

Gerard A.Persoon

Gerard A. Persoon was elected to the board in November 2011

Gerard A. Persoon works as an anthropologist at Leiden University (The Netherlands). He holds the IIAS chair for Environment and Development at the Institute of Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology.

Over the past 30 years he has mainly worked on forest-dwelling communities in Southeast Asia as a researcher and indigenous peoples’ issues in wider contexts. His professional career started on the island of Siberut where he worked for a number of years in an effort to protect the rights of the local Mentawaian communities in relation to the logging companies and the development policies of the Indonesian government.

He has also been involved in numerous projects in the field of indigenous capacity building, nature conservation and integrated conservation and development programmes including the Regional Network for Indigenous Peoples in Southeast Asia (RNIP), a project which run from 2005 to 2009. The results of these activities have been published in articles and books.

He has supervised numerous Master and PhD students on related topics from Indonesia, the Philippines and other countries. In addition he has served on a number of official boards in relation to indigenous peoples’ issues, representing the Netherlands’ government within the context of CBD and WIPO. At the moment he is a member of the Dutch Timber Procurement Committee which is responsible for evaluating timber certificates in terms of social (including indigenous peoples’ rights) and ecological criteria, and advising the Dutch government on the acceptability of specific certificates.

Claire Methven O’Brien

Claire Methven O’Brien was appointed to the board from January 2012

Dr. Claire Methven O’Brien is a Senior Adviser at the Danish Institute for Human Rights, where her work includes analysis, advice and research across a range of business and human rights issues, as well as capacity development of National Human Rights Institutions on business and human rights. From 2009-11, Claire was Coordinator of the Working Group on Business and Human Rights of the International Coordinating Committee (ICC) of National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs).

Claire was awarded a PhD in Law from the European University Institute, Florence in 2009 for her doctoral thesis, entitled "Human Rights and Transnational Corporations: For A Multilevel Governance Approach". Her published research addresses challenges for human rights implementation in the UN system, through national law and in the corporate sector. She teaches and speaks regularly on a range of human rights and business issues.