Mikael Wigell is Research Director at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA), where he previously was Programme Director of the Global Security Programme. He is also Adjunct Professor in International Political Economy at Tampere University and a World Economic Forum Expert, currently curating the WEF’s Geoeconomics section. 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. He has been a Member of the Development Policy Committee of the Finnish Government and President of the Finnish International Studies Association. He is an international pioneer in geoeconomic and hybrid threats analytics, and his work has been published in top-ranked academic journals such as International Affairs, World Development, The Washington Quarterly, and Comparative Strategy.

He is also Co-Director of the Defense AI Observatory at Helmut Schmidt University/ University of the Federal Armed Forces, Senior Research Fellow at the German Institute for Defense and Strategic Studies, Associate Fellow at the Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies (CASSIS), subject matter expert at the Hague Center for Strategic Studies (HCSS) and member of the advisory boards of Zeitschrift für Außen- und Sicherheitspolitik and The Defence Horizon Journal. He has studied international relations, business administration, economics, and law at the University of St. Gallen, where he also received his PhD. His latest book as editor (with Johann Strobl) is Storms Ahead: Te Future Geoeconomic World Order.

Prior he was a Senior Research Fellow at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs and the Director for Policy Planning and Analysis at the National Emergency Supply Agency (NESA) in Finland, the lead agency in economic resilience, with responsibilities in strategy development, international relations, analysis, and research coordination. He also has extensive corporate experience in security, risk, and resilience leadership in regional and global leadership roles. He has for instance, headed Nokia’s regional corporate security function in the Asia Pacific region and the corporate resilience functions as the Global Head of Risk and Resilience. Christian is a frequent speaker at international high-level security gatherings and conferences, e.g., in the European Union, NATO, and the OECD High-Level Risk Forum (HLRF). Christian has a PhD in International Relations from the University of Sydney, an MBA from Bond University, and a MA (International Relations) from Flinders University, Australia. Christian has also published scholarly articles in international security, geoeconomics, resilience, and strategic risk.

Jens Hillebrand Pohl lectures at the intersection of law and geoeconomics. He is a Research Fellow of the Institute for Globalization and International Regulation (IGIR) at Maastricht University. He is also an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the United Nations University, an advisory editor of the Yearbook of Socio-Economic Constitutions, published by Springer Nature, and a former article editor of the Harvard International Law Journal. He has held visiting appointments at the Max Planck Institute for Procedural Law and the World Trade Institute. He has worked as a Legal and Compliance Officer for the European Stability Mechanism and Associate Attorney in a New York-based law firm.   

He earned his PhD in law from Maastricht University, holds an MSc in Economics and Business from the Stockholm School of Economics, and an LLM from Harvard Law School.