Research Associates

Dr. Alexander Braun is a Professor with the Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering at Queen's University.  His research focus is on global geophysics, geodynamics, satellite geodesy, and Arctic change. A special emphasis is on solid Earth-cryosphere interactions in Arctic Canada and Greenland. He is currently conducting research in the field of Arctic sea-ice mapping using a combination of space borne, airborne and in-situ measurements. 

After obtaining a PhD in Geophysics from the University of Frankfurt, Dr. Braun worked for the GeoFoschungsZentrum Potsdam on Satellite mission development and operations. In 2002, he became a Byrd Fellow at the Byrd Polar Research Center and a Senior Research Associate at the Laboratory for Space Geodesy and Remote Sensing of the Ohio State University. He was Associate Professor of Geodesy in the Schulich School of Engineering at the University of Calgary.  Prior to moving to Kingston, ON, Dr. Braun was at the University of Texas, Dallas.

Allice Legat is a practicing anthropologist with an interest in how the past inform present decision making and what it means to be knowledgeable, especially in an environment of industrial development and climate change.  She is also interested in how practice anthropology can inform theoretical understandings in the social sciences.  Allice is currently working with the Rae-Edzo Friendship Centre, Behchoko, NT on a climate change and health project, and with the Sahtu Renewable Resources Board, NWTon an Environmental Monitoring Framework and Traditional Knowledge Guidelines project. She is currently an Honorary Research Fellow with the Anthropology Department, University of Aberdeen and was the Roberta Bondar Fellow, Trent University, Peterborough, Ontario during 2012-2013.  Yellowknife, NWT is her home.

William (Bill) Barr holds degrees in Geography from the University of Aberdeen, Scotland and McGill University, Québec.  From 1968 until 1999 he was a member of the faculty of the Department of Geography, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, and from 1985 until 1997 was head of that department.  In 1999 he moved to Calgary, where he is one of the Research Fellows in residence at the Arctic Institute of North America.  From 1971 until 1978 he was editor of The Musk-Ox, the journal of the Institute for Northern Studies, University of Saskatchewan, and from 1977 until 1993, Associate Editor, then Editor of Polar Geography and Geology. He was Editor of the Northern Lights Series, co-published by the Arctic Institute of North America and the University of Calgary Press from 2001 - 2012.  A glacial geomorphologist by training, since 1972 his major research focus has been the history of exploration of the Arctic, and to a lesser degree, the Antarctic.

Callum Thomson, a graduate of the University of Calgary (B.A. Hons., Archaeology) and Bryn Mawr College (M.A., Anthropology) is an archaeologist specializing in circumpolar cultures. He has spent more than 30 years undertaking field research in the Canadian Arctic and Subarctic and for the past 15 years has served in the off-season as lecturer and guide on small expedition cruise ships in the Arctic, North Atlantic and Antarctica. Callum is a former Curator of Archaeology and Ethnology at the Newfoundland Museum, former Provincial Archaeologist for Newfoundland and Labrador, and worked for 14 years as Heritage Resources Manager for an international firm of environmental and engineering consultants. Callum and Research Associate/Life Member Jane Sproull Thomson now live in Pictou Landing, NS, where they manage Thomson Heritage Consultants, specializing in Arctic studies.

Chris entered Canada's public service as a research economist in the Department of Industry in 1986 and joined the Department of External Affairs later that year. He served abroad in Washington, D.C., Moscow, and with the International Staff at NATO Headquarters in Brussels. While at the Canadian Embassy in Washington from 2000 to 2004, he served on the Permanent Joint Board on Defence (PJBD).  In Ottawa, he held a number of positions including serving on the Russia Desk, as deputy director of the Economic Summit Division and as a Director in the Global Partnership Program where he was involved in WMD destruction in Russia. In 2004, he was a senior analyst in the Canada-U.S. Secretariat in the Privy Council Office. After serving as the Director of the Office of the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs, he was appointed Ambassador to Finland from 2009 to 2013.  Returning to Ottawa, he became the  Executive Director of the Circumpolar Affairs Division during Canada's Chairmanship of the Arctic Council from 2013 to 2015 and travelled extensively to Canada's North. He became Executive Director of the Intelligence Policy and Programs Division in 2017 and retired from Global Affairs Canada in 2020.  He is a former member of the AINA Board of Directors.  

Constance Martin became a Research Associate of AINA in 1986 and a Fellow of the Institute in 2004. She earned both a BA and an MA from the University of Calgary. Her graduate thesis was a study of the visual records of expeditions to the Far North in search of the Northwest Passage. After teaching art history for several years, she joined AINA and has curated several Arctic art exhibitions. Her research has been in Canada, the US, England and Norway, as well as St. Petersburg, Russia. Currently, she is organizing AINA's photographic archives collection dating from the late 19th into mid 20th century into an online archive and database.

Gerald (Gerry) Holdsworth was educated in New Zealand and the United States where he obtained a Ph D in Geology, specializing in Geophysics. He came to Ottawa in 1969 to take up a position with the (then) Department of Energy Mines and Resources as Head of the Arctic Section of the Glaciology Sub-Division within Hydrological Sciences Division. He did glacier surveys on Baffin Island and Ellesmere Island before turning attention to Mount Logan in the Yukon. In 1980 he moved to Calgary with the Department of Environment that evolved from earlier Government Departments. He has specialized in high altitude ice core research since then and collaborates with scientists from the University of Calgary and the University of Toronto.

A graduate of the Univeristy of Toronto (B.Sc.) and the University of Calgary (Ph.D.), Jon's first experience in the Canadian Arctic was as a field assistant with the Institute of Arctic and Alpine Research on Baffin Island in the 1970's. Subsequent fieldwork with the Geological Survey of Canada included Melville Peninsula and Kluane National Park.

Following retirement from a 26 year career in the Calgary oil industry he continues his Earth science outreach activities as a guide and instructor for the Burgess Shale Geoscience Foundation, a member of the Canadian Geoscience Education Network, and as a lecturer on small expedition cruises in the Arctic.

He is currently a volunteer assistant to an Inuit Elder - driven initiative, Tusaqtuut, documenting the core knowledge of the few remaining Elders born on the land of South Baffin prior to relocation to Arctic settlements. This includes planning a southern knowledge-sharing visit to the University of Calgary hosted by the Arctic Institute. This will provide opportunity to review the Arctic Institute archives with the Inuit Elders thereby initiating a project to increase the value of the Institute's Arctic photographic collection by identifying some of the Nunavumiut in the photos.

Dr. Karim-Aly Kassam is Associate Professor of Environmental and Indigenous Studies at Cornell University, and a Research Associate of the Arctic Institute of North America. Dr. Kassam is interested in applied research that has immediate impact and is of relevance to communities. His wide variety of research interests include Arctic social science, bio-cultural diversity, circumpolar cultures and change, climate change and its impacts, community economic development, gender analysis, human ecology, indigenous knowledge (ways of knowing), indigenous land and marine use, natural resource policy and management, participatory action research, and social change in indigenous communities.

Ken holds B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in geology from the University of Durham, England and has worked for more than 40 years in the international oil and gas exploration industry. He has long held an interest in the Arctic and Far North since he worked on geological field parties in the Canadian High Arctic and in Alaska in the 1970s. 

He is currently studying the geology, geography, archaeology, and history of exploration of Foxe Basin, with particular emphasis on Prince Charles Island, Air Force Island and Foley Island, the last parts of Canada to be discovered and added to the map in 1948.

Research Gate Publications

Magdalena A.K. Muir, B.A., J.D., LL.M, is a Research Associate with Arctic Institute of North America at the University of Calgary since 1991, with  extensive research and writings implemented in collaboration with  academic institutions, governments, industry and northern communities. 

Arctic and polar research projects are described on the AINA website, and include significant and ongoing research on sustainable energy development, sustainable tourism, and climate impacts, adaptation and mitigation in polar and mid-latitude regions. 

Further information on Dr. Muir's research is found under her various project descriptions on the AINA website, with abstracts and full publications being available in a search of the ASTIS Database and Researchgate.

From 2014 onwards, Dr. Muir has delivered modules on economic development, environmental and socio-cultural issues in the northern and circumpolar region for the Aboriginal Relations Leadership Certificate Program. Since 2004, Dr. Muir is Advisory Board Member, Climate and Global Change with the Coastal and Marine Union (EUCC), leading engagement on climate impacts, adaptation and mitigation for Europe’s coastal and marine areas, with a strategic focus on the Arctic and regional seas.

Since 2011, Dr. Muir is also Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University in Washington DC  in the Masters of Science: Energy Policy and Climate  program at the Zanyl Krieger School of Arts and Sciences. From 2012 to 2014, Dr. Muir was appointed as  Associate Professor with the Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences, Aarhus University in Herning, Denmark, and remains affiliated with the Arctic Research Centre and Nordic Centre of Excellence for Nordic Strategic Adaptation Research (NCoE NORD-STAR).

From 2013 to 2014, Dr Muir implemented a Fulbright Scholarship as Adjunct Associate Researcher with the Columbia Climate Center in the Earth Institute at Columbia University in New York City; and as a Visiting Scholar with the Center for Carbon-free Power Integration and Mangone Center for Marine Policy in the College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment at the University of Delaware. 

P. Whitney Lackenbauer is a Canadian historian and frequent commentator on contemporary circumpolar affairs.  Born and raised in Kitchener, Ontario, he completed his undergraduate studies at the St. Jerome’s University and was honoured to return back to him alma mater as a faculty member soon after completing his doctorate.  Although actively engaged in various research programmes related to Canadian defence, foreign policy, and Arctic issues, he is passionate about undergraduate teaching – an outlet for his passion and enthusiasm for all aspects of Canadian history.

Whitney was a Fulbright Fellow at Johns Hopkins University in 2010 and a Canadian International Council Research Fellow in 2008-09.  He has travelled extensively with the Canadian Rangers from coast to coast to coast over the last decade, and he was made Honorary Lieutenant Colonel of the 1st Canadian Ranger Patrol Group in 2014. 

His current research includes Arctic sovereignty and security issues since the Second World War; the Canada-United States Joint Arctic Weather Station (JAWS) program, which operated in the High Arctic from 1947-72; the history of the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line; and the evolution of Canada's Northern strategies.

Whitney is married with three children, and lives on a working farm in Otterville, Ontario. He and his sons are passionate about all things Star Wars.

For more about his teaching, scholarship, and research projects, please visit his website at http://www.lackenbauer.ca.

Peter Johnson is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Ottawa specializing in mountain regions. His research has focused on the geomorphology and hydrology of the St.Elias Mountains in the southwest Yukon since 1970. In 1973 he started a field course in the region and this has run annually either in remote sites or at the Kluane Lake Research Station (KLRS) of the Arctic Institute. Over 250 students have been introduced to northern fieldwork through the course. During the last five years a glaciology course has been added to the program at the Icefield Discovery Camp on the St.Elias Icefield. His research and teaching have used the KLRS facility since 1970. He has also filled a number of roles in national and international circumpolar science including Chair of the Canadian Polar Commission, President of the Association of Canadian Universities for Northern Studies, Vice-President of the International Arctic Science Committee and a Council Member of the University of the Arctic.

Robert studied the impact of development in the Arctic and drew on his experience as mineral advisor to TFN during Nunavut land claim negotiations. The result of his work was published by AINA and U of C Press in 2003 the book "New Owners inTheir Own Land - Minerals and Inuit Land Claims" Robert has lectured on the subject a number of times including a march 2004 address at the convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association in Toronto. The event was hosted by Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., an agency that administers Inuit owned lands and resources.

Sean Maher has been a Research Associate at AINA since 1998. He holds a BA in Archaeology and a Master of Environmental Design from the University of Calgary. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (UK), and has recently served as Climate Change Policy Coordinator for the Canadian International Development Agency. Sean's research interests are broadly concerned with the political and cultural economies of work and labour within northern Canadian Aboriginal societies. His doctoral research explores the importance of historical and contemporary roles and experiences of work and labour within the community of Fort Chipewyan, Alberta, working closely with members of the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nation, the Mikisew Cree First Nation, and the Fort Chipewyan Metis Association. Sean has recently presented aspects of his research to the Association of American Geographers (AAG) and to the British Association for Canadian Studies (BACS)? His most recent research follows the intersections between the experiences of work and employment, and issues of health within northern Aboriginal communities.