In this roundtable discussion, experts on the Arctic region will present on topics including: myths in news about the Arctic; underdiscussed topics; how historical methods, scholarship, and materials contribute to current conversations on the Arctic; climate emergency effects; resource extraction and the relevance of the region. 

Panelists inclue:
Alina Bykova, Stanford University;
Gabriella Gricius, University of Konstanz;
Olivia Wynne Houck, MIT

This roundtable will be moderated by James Goldgeier, Research Affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Please RSVP here.

This event is sponsored by Stanford Global Studies’ Oceanic Imaginaries, a multi-year initiative that adopts the world’s oceans as an analytical framework for advancing cross-regional, interdisciplinary research and activities addressing timely global topics.

About the speakers:

Alina Bykova is a PhD candidate in Russian and East European History at Stanford University. Her research interests include Arctic and Soviet environmental history with a focus on natural resources and industry. Alina is writing her dissertation on the history of energy and extraction on Svalbard, Norway. In 2025-2026, Alina is a predoctoral fellow at the Clements Center for National Security at the University of Texas at Austin. She also works as a senior research associate and editor-in-chief at The Arctic Institute, an interdisciplinary think tank.

Alina earned her masters in European and Russian Affairs from the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto in 2019. Her masters thesis was about the rise and fall of Soviet mining settlements on Svalbard. Prior to her work in academia, she completed a Bachelor of Journalism at Toronto Metropolitan University and worked as a breaking news reporter at the Toronto Star, Canada’s largest newspaper.

Gabriella Gricius is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Konstanz and a Fellow and the Media Coordinator with the North American and Arctic Defence and Security Network (NAADSN). She is also a Senior Research Associate at the Arctic Institute. At the University of Konstanz, she is currently working on a project covering Nordic security community formation and the conceptualization and coordination of responses to hybrid threats to critical infrastructure in the European Arctic region.

She received her Ph.D. from Colorado State University's Political Science Department where her dissertation explored the prevalence of low-tension discourse in Greenland, Svalbard, the Northern Sea Route, and the Northwest Passage. Her research interests broadly cover international relations, Arctic security, the potential for desecuritization during great power competition, and the role of experts in security decision-making processes.

Olivia Wynne Houck is a PhD candidate in the History of Architecture program at MIT, where she focuses on the intersection of the built environment, diplomacy, and geopolitics during the early Cold War. She is particularly interested in the interplay between the origins of NATO, American foreign policy, technology, and infrastructure in relation to the European and North American Arctic regions. Her dissertation investigates how the North Atlantic region became a strategic territory, in large part through the American desire for, and fear of, military bases on the islands of Greenland and Iceland during the 1940s. The resulting territory, both infrastructurally and diplomatically, would form the basis of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

She is a Research Associate at The Arctic Institute and a Research Fellow with the North American and Arctic Defense and Security Network. She has published a book chapter on the geopolitics of Svalbard, and has edited two series for The Arctic Institute on ‘NATO in the Arctic,’ with Alina Bykova, and ‘Infrastructure in the Arctic.’ She holds an M.A. in Architectural History from the University of Virginia, and a Postgraduate Diploma in ‘Small States Studies’ from the University of Iceland.

James Goldgeier is a Research Affiliate at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and a Professor at the School of International Service at American University, where he served as Dean from 2011-17. From 2019-2025, he was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution. In 2018-19, he held the Library of Congress Chair in U.S.-Russia Relations at the John W. Kluge Center and was a visiting senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Prior to joining American University, he was a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, where from 2001-05 he directed the Elliott School’s Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies. He also taught at Cornell University, and has held a number of public policy appointments and fellowships, including Director for Russian, Ukrainian, and Eurasian Affairs on the National Security Council Staff, Whitney Shepardson Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Henry A. Kissinger Chair at the Library of Congress, and Edward Teller National Fellow at the Hoover Institution.

Dr. Goldgeier has authored or edited six books, most recently Evaluating NATO Enlargement: From Cold War Victory to the Russia-Ukraine War (2023), co-edited with Joshua Shifrinson. He is the recipient of the Edgar S. Furniss book award in national and international security and co-recipient of the Georgetown University Lepgold Book Prize in international relations. Dr. Goldgeier is a senior adviser to the Bridging the Gap initiative, which promotes scholarly contributions to public debate and decision making on global challenges and U.S. foreign policy, and is co-editor of the Oxford University Press Bridging the Gap Book Series.

Dr. Goldgeier is past president of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs (2015-2017). He received his M.A. and PhD in Political Science from the University of California Berkeley and his A.B., magna cum laude in Government, from Harvard University.