Dr. Sanna Kopra

Dr. Sanna Kopra is a Senior Fellow at The Arctic Institute. Her research focuses on Arctic politics and governance in general and the role of China in Arctic affairs in particular. Her other research interests include International Relations theory, international environmental politics, and discourses and norms of international responsibility. She received Doctoral Degree in International Politics from the University of Tampere, Finland, in November 2016.

Sanna works as a Senior Researcher in the Northern Institute for Environmental and Minority Law of the Arctic Centre at the University of Lapland, Finland. Currently, she leads three projects: “A Planetary Approach to Global Arctic politics” (2022-2024, funded by the University of Lapland), “Climate Responsibility as a Cornerstone of Multilateral Cooperation?” (2022-2025, funded by the Kone Foundation), and “China’s Arctic policy and changing security dynamics in the Arctic” (2021-2022, funded by the Support Foundation for National Defence in Finland).

Previously, Sanna worked as an Academy of Finland Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Arctic Centre, University of Lapland, and a Visiting Scholar at the Aleksanteri Institute, University of Helsinki. Her project (the Academy of Finland project. no. 315402, 2018-2021) focused on China’s Arctic engagement and normative transformation in the Arctic region.

Sanna has published several peer-reviewed articles, book chapters, and commentaries on China, great power responsibility, climate policy, and the Arctic. Her book China and Great Power Responsibility for Climate Change was published by Routledge in August 2018. She is also a co-editor of Chinese Policy and Presence in the Arctic (Brill Publishing, 2020).