Farewell symposium for Louwrens Hacquebord

On 28 May 2013, the Arctic centre will be organizing a symposium for Prof. Louwrens Hacquebord, who is retiring.

Hacquebord was the first professor of Arctic and Antarctic Studies in the Netherlands. Thanks to him, the Arctic Centre of the University of Groningen is a flourishing multidisciplinary research centre with an excellent reputation at home and abroad, both within and outside the academic world.

Smeerenburg

Hacquebord earned his spurs with research on the 17th century whaling settlement of Smeerenburg. He was awarded a PhD with distinction by the University of Amsterdam in 1984 for a thesis on this topic. Later, Hacquebord conducted archaeological and historical research on the exploitation of the polar regions and the geopolitical consequences of this. His crowning achievement was the LASHIPA project (History of Large Scale Resource Exploitation in Polar Areas), which started in International Polar Year. This project investigated the history of the exploitation of natural resources in the polar regions from the 17th century down to the present day.

Arctic Council

Partly thanks to the efforts of Hacquebord, the Netherlands became an Arctic Council observer in 1996. Due to his wide polar expertise, Hacquebord is an advisor for the interdepartmental polar meetings and the business world is also increasingly asking his advice. On the international front, he played a role in founding the International Arctic Science Committee, of which he was the vice-chair for years.

Louwrens Hacquebord was appointed Officer in the Order of Orange-Nassau in 2011.

Several internationally renowned researchers will speak at his farewell symposium, including Robert Corell, who is mainly famous as the chair of the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment.

Programme: see Willem Barentsz Polar Institute

For more information:

Louwrens Hacquebord

Annette Scheepstra