Professor Liisa Laakso (Nordic Africa Institute) Sweden

Professor Liisa Laakso is a Senior Researcher at the Nordic Africa Institute (Sweden) and an expert in world politics and development, with a focus on democracy, crisis management and EU–Africa relations. She has held various positions of trust at national and international levels, including membership of the Finnish Government’s Research and Innovation Council. Currently, she is Chair of the Human Rights Committee of the Council of Finnish Academies (CoFA), Chair of the International Accreditation Council for Global Development Studies and Research of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (IAC/EADI), and a member of the board of the Africa Coalition for Academic Freedom (ACAF). Before joining the Nordic Africa Institute (Sweden), she served as Rector of the University of Tampere (Finland) and, before that, as Dean of the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Helsinki. In 2004, she was appointed Professor of Development and International Cooperation and UNESCO Chair at the University of Jyväskylä.