Professor emeritus at the University of California Santa Barbara, Oran Young, is the Mohn Prize laureate 2024 for his leading research and geopolitical work on the Arctic.
During his extensive career, Oran Young has been a strong promoter of geopolitical attention to the Arctic. He is a leader in studies of international governance and environmental institutions, and the world's foremost expert on these themes in the Arctic.
As a political scientist and environmental researcher, he is recognized for his interdisciplinary research on international institution building, resource management and the human dimension of climate change in the Arctic.
– Being selected to receive the 2024 Mohn Prize is an exceptional honour. For me, it’s the capstone of 50 years of active engagement in Arctic affairs, Oran Young says.
- We stand at a critical juncture regarding international cooperation in the Arctic, and we need to reinvent our institutions, so they are well suited for the next decades. We are in need of creative engagement between the policy and scientific communities to come up with solutions to the new challenges in the Arctic, Young says.
The Scientific Committee of The Mohn Prize writes in its justification that Young's research and leadership over several decades have been decisive for the development of integrated and collaboratively focused research in the Arctic.
Young is one of the most cited researchers in his field, including authorship of 20 books, and 150 professional articles and book chapters. He was appointed honorary doctorate at UiT The Arctic University of Norway in 2015.
About the Mohn Prize
The International Mohn Prize for Outstanding Research Related to the Arctic (The Mohn Prize) has been established in collaboration by Academia Borealis The Academy of Sciences and Letters of Northern Norway (NNVA), Tromsø Research Foundation (TFS), and UiT The Arctic University of Norway (UiT). The prize amounts to 2 million NOK, and is awarded biennially.
The Mohn Prize recognizes outstanding research related to the Arctic. The award also aims at setting issues that are central to the further development of the Arctic on the national and international agenda.
The Mohn Prize is named after Henrik Mohn, who in addition to being considered the founder of Norwegian meteorology, provided a number of Norwegian Polar expeditions (among them Fridtjof Nansen's expedition on the Fram from 1893 to 1896) with meteorological equipment. Henrik Mohn was also the first director general of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, and he was the great uncle of Trond Mohn's father. Given the family connection, and the fact that Henrik Mohn was a pioneer in a field of research that is central to our understanding of Arctic processes, NNVA, TFS and UiT, when establishing a prize to recognise excellence in Arctic research, deemed it very fitting to name it The Mohn Prize.
Source: The Mohn Prize
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