Announcement of Congress:
The Seventh International Congress of the Arctic Social Sciences (ICASS VII) will be held in Akureyri, Iceland, on June 22-26, 2011. This conference, entitled Circumpolar Perspectives in Global Dialogue: Social Sciences beyond the International Polar Year, is being organized by the International Arctic Social Sciences Association (IASSA), and it will be hosted by the University of Akureyri, the Town of Akureyri and the Stefansson Arctic Institute.

An International Congress of the Arctic Social Sciences is held every three years. The congress will offer various venues to share Arctic social science research, and a special opportunity to feature and analyse outcomes of the International Polar Year (IPY 2007-2009) in social, human, and related fields. This will include special project sessions, discussion panels, plenary presentations, workshops, and invited talks. Participation by young researchers and students is encouraged. For information about previous ICASS meetings, see www.iassa.org/meetings.

Briefly about IASSA: The International Arctic Social Sciences Association was founded in 1990 in Fairbanks, Alaska, at a meeting held in conjunction with the 7th Inuit Studies Conference. The creation of IASSA follows the suggestion, made at the Conference on Coordination of Research in the Arctic held in Leningrad in 1988, to establish an international association to represent Arctic social scientists. IASSA is a professional association based on voluntary membership. For the purposes of the association, both the Arctic and the social sciences are defined in a broad and inclusive manner, encompassing all Arctic and subarctic regions, and all disciplines pertaining to the humanities and the social sciences. To learn more about IASSA, please visit our website at www.iassa.org
To become a member, go to www.iassa.org/membership

Call for ICASS VII Session Proposals:
IASSA invites concrete proposals or ideas and thoughts about themes of special interest for sessions and workshops at ICASS VII.

Please submit your session proposal - including a title and a brief description - by October 4, 2010 (extended deadline) to IASSA secretary Lara Olafsdottir at larao@svs.is and IASSA president Joan Nymand Larsen at jnl@unak.is.

We received a significant number of session proposals by the initial submission deadline of September 15. However, several people have indicated their plans to submit a session proposal – but have not done so yet – and therefore we announce this extended deadline. After the extended deadline of October 4, we will announce the list of accepted sessions and circulate the first call for abstracts.

A call for ICASS VII abstracts will be circulated by October 11, with submission deadline by December 15, 2010.

IASSA Council & Secretariat, Contacts and Further Information:
Please visit our new IASSA website at www.iassa.org to stay updated on ICASS VII. You can also stay updated with IASSA and ICASS preparations by subscribing to the IASSA.Net Listserv (go to www.iassa.org/iassanet) and by reading the IASSA newsletter, Northern Notes. The latest issue is Spring/Summer 2010: www.iassa.org/images/stories/NorthernNotes_No32.pdf. The next regular issue will be published in December 2010 and a special 20th Anniversary issue will be published this upcoming October.
The ICASS VII academic program will be organized by the nine-member IASSA Council (see www.iassa.org/about-iassa/council-members-2008-2011) and the IASSA Secretariat, which is located at the Stefansson Arctic Institute (www.svs.is), Borgir, Akureyri. The 7th ICASS Host Organizing Committee consists of members representing the University of Akureyri, Stefansson Arctic Institute, Town of Akureyri, Arctic Portal, Akureyri Travel, and The Icelandic Centre for Research.

For further information on IASSA or ICASS VII, please contact:

Lara Olafsdottir
IASSA Secretary
larao@svs.is
Tel: 460 8980

Dr. Jon Haukur Ingimundarson
Chair of 7th ICASS Host Organizing Committee
jhi@unak.is
Tel: 460 8982; GSM: 862 0477

Dr. Joan Nymand Larsen
IASSA President
jnl@unak.is
Tel: 460 8984