Chapter 7.1 10 years of knowledge and capacity building: Work done and lessons learned …

Tor Gjertsen is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Tourism and Northern Studies at UiT/The Arctic University of Norway. The last 25 years he has been involved in different projects and programs for business and community development in northern Norway, Russia, and Canada. Between 2006 and 2013, he was the leader of an international Thematic Network on Local and Regional Development on behalf of the University of the Arctic and Finnmark University College, his former employer. Through the Thematic Network and the Gargia conferences for regional development, the main meeting place and forum for discussion of the Network, he has initiated and coordinated several joint international education, research, and development projects and programs between Network members and partners in the Circumpolar North.