Gita J. Ljubicic

Biography

I am happy to be working in my hometown of Ottawa, as well as to be within this hub for northern travel, organizations, and research related to the Canadian Arctic. I have been working in northern Canada since 1998 after first being introduced to northern research through Labrador field work as an undergraduate research assistant at York University. Fascinated by the remote sensing perspective, I pursued my M.Sc. in Geography at Queen’s University focused on tundra vegetation studies using multiple sensor types and resolutions. My 2001 field research was based out of Taloyoak, Nunavut, with two months of camping on Boothia Peninsula to conduct ground truthing. After this summer on the tundra I was hooked on the Arctic! However, in continuing to a Ph.D. my research focus shifted to cultural and environmental geography with emphasis on collaborative research with Inuit communities. My doctoral research sought to characterize the local importance of sea ice processes, use, and change based on Inuit expertise, and in so doing to provide points of intersection with scientific sea ice monitoring and investigations. This research involved close collaborations with the Nunavut communities of Pangnirtung, Cape Dorset, and Igloolik beginning in 2003 and expanding into broader aspects of remote sensing, data management, and northern education through the International Polar Year until 2011. More recent project partnerships have evolved in Gjoa Haven, Nunavut with an emphasis on Elder-youth land camps to learn about caribou in the region (2009 – 2015) and in Makkovik, Nunatsiavut (northern Labrador) to learn about the reciprocal relationships of people and plants (2012 – 2015).

Research Interest

• Inuit knowledge of arctic environments • relationships between language, knowledge, and use of northern environments • geomatics and multi-media tools to represent dynamic knowledge and environmental systems • sea ice and marine environments • human dimensions of environmental change • cross-cultural, collaborative, research methods • linking Inuit and scientific knowledge in a complementary manner • northern content and contributions in education materials and programs