Nicole Covey is the ELN Lead and a Research Fellow at NAADSN, and her research interests focus on Arctic Geopolitics, Defense and Security, Canadian Foreign Policy, and NATO. Nicole is currently working on projects for NAADSN related to NATO’s role in the Arctic and she has previously worked on projects related to the status of infrastructure deficits in the Canadian Arctic, the Arctic Council, and the International Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean. 

Nicole is a current PhD student in Canadian Studies at Trent University and holds a SSHRC-MINDS Joint Initiative Doctoral Award. During her time at Trent thus far, she has already been awarded the Graduate Research Fellowship (2020-4), the Dean’s PhD Scholarship (2020-4), the Quaker Oats Scholarship (2020), the Mary Northway Award in Canadian Studies (2021-24), the Shelagh Grant Endowment for Northern and Arctic Research (2020-24) and is the 2022 WiDs-CGAI (Women in Defence and Security and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute) Fellow. Nicole received her MA in Political Studies from the University of Manitoba in 2020 and during her MA, she held the Duff Roblin Fellowship (2018-20) and the Muriel and Murray Smith Fellowship (2018). She obtained her BA in Political Science from the University of British Columbia in 2017. 

A recent and notable publication of Nicole’s is her Canadian Army Journal piece, “The Case for Renewal: The North Warning System and Canada,” which demonstrates the continued relevance and importance of the North Warning System (NWS) through the lens of Canada’s domestic, continental, and international security spheres. It argues that the prioritization of NWS and other NORAD modernization projects will be beneficial to the Canadian government through strengthening the Canada/US defence relationship and filling a gap in North America’s (and, by extension, Canada’s) defence system during an era of increasing global tensions.

Reading List: Arctic Security, compiled by Nicole Covey, March 2022

Policy Primer: Legitimization of the Arctic Coastal States (A5) through the Central Arctic Ocean (CAO) Fisheries Agreement, by Nicole Covey, October 2021

Policy Brief: South Korea in the Arctic, by Nicole Covey, June 2023.

The Case for Traditional Security, by Nicole Covey, A Brief from Breaking Through: Understanding Sovereignty and Security in the Circumpolar Arctic, March 2021