Dr. Christer Pursiainen is a Professor of Societal Security at the Department of Technology and Safety, Faculty of Science and Technology, Arctic University of Norway (UiT) in Tromsø, where he has been teaching since 2014.
Before his current position, Dr. Pursiainen held senior management and research roles at several prestigious institutions, including the European Commission's DG Joint Research Centre (JRC) in Ispra, Italy; the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) in Stockholm, Sweden; Nordregio, Nordic Centre for Spatial Development (also in Stockholm); the Russian-European Centre for Economic Policy (RECEP) in Moscow; the Aleksanteri Institute – Finnish Centre for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Helsinki; and the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (UPI-FIIA) in Helsinki.
Prof. Pursiainen has also been a senior visiting scholar at the London School of Economics, Centre for International Studies (2018–2019), and at the University of Hamburg, Center for Sustainable Societal Research (2023–2024).
His scholarly work includes approximately 140 publications, covering topics such as societal security, crisis management, critical infrastructure protection and resilience, international relations theory, foreign policy analysis, political psychology, regional cooperation, comparative politics, state-society relations, and political history. These works have been published internationally in multiple languages.
In addition to his academic contributions, he has written a fiction novel in Finnish based on apocryphal biblical texts, as well as three popular-historical biographies.
SELECTED WRITINGS 2021-2024 (click the underlined title)
Pursiainen, C. (2024). Ždanov Tornissa [Ždanov in Hotel Tower, in Finnish.] Helsinki: Otava. NEW BOOK!
Pursiainen, C. (2023). Resilienssin ulottuvuudet. [The Dimensions of Resilience, in Finnish.] Kosmopolis, 53(4). Peer-reviewed journal article.
Bakke Lie, L., de Korte, L., & Pursiainen, C. (2023). “Here, I will stay until I die” – Exploring the relationship between place attachment, risk perception and coping behavior in two small Norwegian communities. Regional Environmental Change, 23: 115. Peer-reviewed journal article.
Pursiainen, C. (2022). The Crisis Cycle. Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Politics/Encyclopedia of Crisis Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Peer-reviewed encyclopedic article.
Pursiainen, C., Abdel Fattah, D., & Staupe-Delgado, R. (2022). Higher Education and the Changing Situation of Societal Security in the Baltic Sea Region. Journal on Baltic Security, 8(2). Peer-reviewed journal article.
- Pursiainen, C., & Kytömaa, E. (2022). From European critical infrastructure protection to the resilience of European critical entities: what does it mean? Sustainable and Resilient Infrastructure. Peer-reviewed journal article.
- Staupe-Delgado, R., Abdel-Fattah, D., & Pursiainen, C. (2022). A discipline without a name? Contrasting three fields dealing with hazards and disasters. International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction. Peer-reviewed journal article.
- Pursiainen, C. (2021). Digital solutions for online learning in societal security. Council of the Baltic Sea States: Stockholm. Report.
- Pursiainen, C. et al. (2021). Key observations and recommendations. Higher education study programmes in the field of societal security in the Baltic sea Region. Council of the Baltic Sea States: Stockholm. Report.
- Pursiainen, C. & Forsberg, T. (2021). The Psychology of Foreign Policy. Palgrave Series of Political Psychology. Palgrave MacMillan/SpringerNature. NEW BOOK!
- Pursiainen, C. & Abdel-Fattah, D. (2021). Societal Security as Higher Education: The State of the Art in the Baltic Sea Region. NEEDS project proceedings. Council of the Baltic Sea States: Stockholm. Report.
- Young, S., Bazone, G., Zuin, O., & Pursiainen, C. (2021). Enhancing Societal Security Graduate Employability in the Baltic Sea Region. NEEDS project proceedings. Council of the Baltic Sea States: Stockholm. Report.
- Pursiainen, C. & Rød, B. (2021). National disaster risk assessments in Europe. How comparable are they and why? Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy, 12(1), 2021, pp. 1-21. Peer-reviewed journal article.
- Pursiainen, C., Alden, C. & Bertelsen, R. (2021). The Arctic and Africa in China’s Foreign Policy: How Different Are They and What Does This Tell Us? The Arctic Review on Law and Politics, 12(1), pp. 31-55. Peer-reviewed journal article.
