Mikael Wigell is Research Director at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and Adjunct Professor in International Political Economy at the University of Tampere. He belongs to the World Economic Forum Expert Network, currently curating the WEF’s Geoeconomics section. Wigell has also been a Member of the Development Policy Committee of the Finnish Government and Chairman of the Finnish International Studies Association. He earned his PhD at the London School of Economics and he has been a Visiting Fellow at the Changing Character of War Centre, Oxford University.
His work on great-power politics, geoeconomics, hybrid threats and the political economy of development has been published in top-ranked international academic journals such as International Affairs, World Development, The Washington Quarterly, Comparative Strategy, Democratization, Asia Europe Journal and Global Affairs. He has also written policy reports for the European Commission, the European Parliament and the Government of Finland, as well as a number of briefings for international organizations such as the World Economic Forum, the Japan Development Bank and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. He led the International Business Risk and Resilience Monitor-project funded by the European Commission, as well as the Nordic Security of Supply in an Age of Disruption-project funded by the Nordic Council of Ministers. His latest publication (ed. together with Mika Aaltola and Sören Scholvin) is Geo-economics and Power Politics in the 21st Century: The Revival of Economic Statecraft (Routledge, 2018; 2020).
Honorary title
Adjunct professor, University of Tampere
Expertise
International economic relations, geoeconomics and sanctions, hybrid threats and hybrid warfare, Chinese and Russian grand strategies, EU's external economic relations
Degrees
PhD, London School of Economics, 2011
Language skills
English, Finnish, Spanish, Swedish (working languages); French, German, Italian, Portuguese (receptive skills)
Projects
Geoeconomic risks and their impact on the security of supply of Finland and the European Union
Power politics by economic means: The geoeconomics research initiative
Europe facing great-power competition: Mapping Finland’s risks and options in the geoeconomic rivalry
Nordic Security of Supply in the Age of Disruption
International Business Risk and Resilience Monitor for Strengthening National Economic Preparedness (IBRRM)