News and Announcements

David K. Shipler is a best-selling author, winner of the Pulitzer Prize, and former foreign correspondent for the The New York Times. Please join us at ISER to hear Mr. Shipler talk about alleviating poverty by recognizing and dealing with the multiple interacting problems families have. His book, The Working Poor: Invisible in America, was a finalist for the 2005 National Book Critics Circle Award.

Please join us at ISER to hear Kirsti Westphalen, the Consul General of Finland in Los Angeles, talk about Finland’s Arctic policy. Ms. Westphalen has worked in the Finnish Ministry for Foreign Affairs for three decades, and has had postings in Paris, Beijing, New York, Damascus and Rabat. Since 2008 she has been the Consul General of Finland in Los Angeles, where she has focused on sustainable and clean technology solutions, educational excellence, and exchanges between Finland and the United States. 

When: Monday, September 10, 12 to 1 

Alaska’s state government is sitting pretty right now, with oil revenues at record levels, $60 billion in savings, and maybe another $100 billion worth of petroleum in the ground. Still, a new paper by Scott Goldsmith, professor emeritus of economics at ISER, finds that trouble is looming, with declining oil production and growing state spending. 

The first analysis of the economic effects of invasive species in Alaska finds that governments and nonprofit groups spent about $29 million from 2007 to 2011, or nearly $6 million a year, to manage those species. Tobias Schwörer of ISER and Rebekka Federer and Howard Ferren of the Alaska SeaLife Center did the analysis, based on a survey of public and private organizations that deal with invasive species around the state. The research was funded by several federal and state agencies.

Two new publications by Ginny Fay and Alejandra Villalobos Melendez of ISER provide the big picture of electricity around Alaska. Both are based on research done for the Alaska Energy Authority.

Oil started flowing through the trans-Alaska 35 years ago this summer, on June 20, 1977. Since then, the state government has collected $170 billion in revenues from North Slope oil, in today's dollars. A new paper by Scott Goldsmith, professor emeritus of economics at ISER, assesses what the state has done with its oil wealth so far. 

To read the paper, click here (PDF, 944.8KB).

Broadband (high speed Internet) is being extended to 65 communities in Southwest Alaska. As part of its ongoing research on the role of telecommunications in the socio-economic development of rural Alaska, ISER is conducting a telephone survey in SW Alaska in June. The purpose of the survey is to learn about current access to the Internet and what different high speed Internet could make for residents of the region. 

Sara Komarnisky is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver. She has been a visiting research scholar at ISER since September 2011, and is in Anchorage working on an ethnographic project that traces the connections between Anchorage and a town in the state of Michoacan, Mexico. Please join us for an informal discussion about what she’s learned so far. 

When: Tuesday, June 5, 12 to 1 

Where: ISER Conference Room, Fifth Floor, Diplomacy Building. Free parking.