Mr Ole Øvretveit is Director of the Arctic Frontiers Secretariat in Tromsø, Norway. Dr Ingrid A. Medby is a Lecturer in Political Geography at Oxford Brookes University, UK, researching Arctic identities and politics. Together they have co-authored a chapter on the role of Arctic conferences, to be published in the edited book “The Role of Regional Governments in International Affairs: Lessons from the Arctic” (eds. Axworthy, T.A. Tsui, E. and French, S.) in 2018.