Dr Oran Young is a renowned Arctic expert and a world leader in the fields of international governance and environmental institutions. Oran Young specializes in the fields of Institutional and International Governance and Environmental Institutions. Dr. Young also serves as a Co-director of the Program on Governance for Sustainable Development at the Bren School, as Director of the Institute of Arctic Studies, and as Adjunct Professor of Political Science at the University of Tromsø in Norway.
Dr. Young served for six years as the founding chair of the Committee on the Human Dimensions of Global Change of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States and is now chair of the Scientific Steering Committee of the international project on the Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDGEC) under the auspices of the International Human Dimensions Programme on Global Environmental Change.
In addition, Oran Young served for six years as vice-president of the International Arctic Science Committee and is currently a leader in the development of a decentralized University of the Arctic. Dr. Young’s scientific work encompasses both basic research focusing on collective choice and social institutions and applied research dealing with issues pertaining to international environmental governance and to the Arctic as an international region.
Dr. Young’s work as author or co-author of over twenty books and numerous scholarly articles includes the recent titles: Governance in World Affairs; Creating Regimes: Arctic Accords and International Governance; International Governance: Protecting the Environment in a Stateless Society; Arctic Politics: Conflict and Cooperation in the Circumpolar North; and International Cooperation: Building Regimes for Natural Resources and the Environment.
Oran Young holds a PhD, MA from Yale University and a BA from Harvard University.