Unn Haukenes Holgersen

Work areas

• Indigenous peoples and Arctic communities

• Industrial development and food systems

• Climate, nature and energy transition

• Oceans and coastal communities

Competence and work experience

Unn Holgersen has an interdisciplinary background in veterinary medicine and environmental management. Her work focuses on the intersections between ocean health, animal health and societal transformation, with a particular emphasis on Arctic and coastal communities and the One Health framework. She is a veterinarian from the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (ULPGC), with further education in aquaculture and fish health (NMBU) and GIS (NORD University). In her fifth year at ULPGC, she did her final project on stranded whales, a neurobiological study of toothed whales in the Canary Islands. After working in clinical veterinary practice in Norway, she moved to marine environmental management as an advisor at the Norwegian Centre for Marine Litter (Marfo), now part of the Norwegian Environment Agency (MDIR). Here she worked on monitoring and management of marine pollution (OSPAR beach litter monitoring), and contributed to the development of the national digital tools Renthav and Rydde for mapping and managing marine litter. By Nordland Research Institute She has worked on interdisciplinary research in the areas of ocean management, Arctic litter and sustainability transitions. She has been involved in EU projects such as ArcSolution, where she investigates the impact of pollution on ecosystems, food systems and communities through a “One Health” perspective, as well as projects related to fisheries, aquaculture and plastic pollution. She is also currently part of the EU-funded project AgroPolis, which focuses on agroecological food systems and sustainable value chains, further strengthening her systemic perspective on sustainability. Overall, Unn has experience with both qualitative and quantitative approaches, and is actively engaged in science communication and public dialogue through her work with the debate platform Lytring , which bridges research, policy and society. She has also assisted Researchers with necropsies and diagnostics of stranded whales, and gained valuable practical experience in cetacean pathology and ecology. Combining her veterinary background with social science perspectives and applied environmental management, she has gained valuable insight and a long-standing interest in how pollution and human impacts affect marine species, ecosystems and coastal communities. She is particularly interested in how this knowledge is constructed, framed and applied, and how this in turn can inform more integrated ocean management and support better One Health-based approaches – connecting land, ocean, food and human health.