Dr. Christer Pursiainen is Professor of Societal Security at the Department of Technology and Safety, Faculty of Science and Technology, Arctic University of Norway (UiT) in Tromsø, Norway, since 2014.
Previously, Pursiainen held leading management and research positions at several institutions, including the European Commission's DG Joint Research Centre (JRC), Institute for the Protection and Security of the Citizen (Ispra, Italy); the Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) (Stockholm, Sweden); Nordregio, Nordic Centre for Spatial Development (Stockholm, Sweden); the Russian-European Centre for Economic Policy (RECEP) (Moscow, Russian Federation); 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) (Helsinki, Finland).
Prof. Pursiainen has also held one-year senior visiting positions at the London School of Economics, Centre for International Studies (2018-2019), and the University of Hamburg, Center for Sustainable Societal Research (2023-2024).
His body of work includes approximately 140 scholarly publications, among them sixteen (co-)authored or (co-)edited books, on themes such as societal security, crisis management, critical infrastructure protection and resilience, international relations theory, foreign policy analysis, regional cooperation and integration, comparative politics, state-society relations, and political history. These works have been published in various countries and in several languages. In Finnish, he has also published a fiction novel based on apocryphal biblical texts, along with 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.
