Anyone studying or conducting research at UNIS needs to wrap up warm: the University Centre in Svalbard, or UNIS for short, is the northernmost educational institution in the world. It is located in Longyearbyen, the capital of the Norwegian archipelago of Spitsbergen – at 78° North. Accordingly, teaching and research are focused on Arctic studies. The departments based there include Arctic biology, Arctic geology, Arctic geophysics and Arctic technology.
UNIS was founded in 1993 as a branch of the four Norwegian universities of Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Tromsø. But seminar groups also come from German universities and other countries to carry out experiments on site, i.e. in the Arctic, for several weeks. Each year, around 175 students from Norwegian universities and the same number from the rest of the world take a course at UNIS.
University website: https://www.unis.no/
Photo: Longyearbyen is one of the northernmost settlements in the world – and the location of the UNIS. Credits: Unsplash/James Padolsey.
